Thomas Løvendahl Sørensen (born June 12 1976 in Fredericia, Denmark) is a Danish professional football goalkeeper, who currently plays for Aston Villa in the English Premiership.

He is the starting goalkeeper for the Danish national team, the successor to Peter Schmeichel, and he has played more than fifty matches for his country. He has no major honours to his name, but did start for his country at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and 2004 European Championship (Euro 2004).

Thomas Sørensen started his goalkeeping carrer at Odense BK in 1995, as an understudy to club legend Lars Høgh. For the 1996-97 season, he was loaned out to Vejle BK for six months, and once back at Odense, he was loaned out again, this time at Svendborg fB for the remainding half season, as well as the full 1997-98 season. Hardly anyone outside of Denmark had even heard of the tall athletic keeper when Peter Reid bought the 22-year old from Odense for about £510,000, to strengthen his Sunderland side then newly relegated to the second level league the Football League Championship. This move helped Sunderland to promotion for the top flight English Premiership when Sørensen and his team grabbed the League Championship title in 1999. Sørensen, smashing the club's clean sheet record with 29 clean sheets in the process.

Sørensen was a reserve keeper for Denmark at Template:Ec2, when Peter Schmeichel was at the end of his career. For the 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign in 2001, he took over the job as goalkeeper and helped Denmark qualify. Sørensen was then instrumental as Denmark won their first round group ahead of Senegal, Uruguay and hapless France to book a second round clash against England. However, in the pouring rain at Niigata, Sørensen will forever be remembered for a dreadful blunder as he bundled the ball into his own goal from a Rio Ferdinand header in the 5th minute. England went on to win the match 3-0 and as is the norm in the life of a goalkeeper, one mistake is often most remembered ahead of a hatful of skilful saves.

Back in England, Sunderland were struggling both on and off the pitch and despite the valiant efforts of Sørensen who was a firm favourite with the fans, he could not save the club from relegation in 2003. Reid had already been sacked and as a result of the club's mounting financial worries, they sold Sorensen for a bargain £1.5m to Aston Villa who had held off interest from a handful of other clubs, including Manchester United and Arsenal FC.

He had played nearly 200 games on Wearside and gained legendary status in Sunderland in 2001 when he saved an Alan Shearer penalty kick in the dying moments to preserve a valuable win over arch rivals and neighbors Newcastle United.

Once again representing his country in an international tournament, Sørensen played a great Template:Ec2, gathering the official man of the match award twice after the 0-0 draw with Italy and the 2-0 victory against Bulgaria. Despite his efforts, Denmark was once more eliminated in a 3-0 loss, this time to the Czech Republic in the quarter finals.

• Football League Championship: 1998-99

• Danish national team profile
• FootballDatabase career stats