Indifference to words is a mathematical disease, so let’s be more careful this time:
The collision with Zelgeris is a failure.
The dismissal of Milos Milojevic after half a season is a fiasco.
Then the show continues again.
Jürgen Lennartsson, Ricard Norling, Henrik Onstrand and Milos Milojevic… We’re not even halfway to the Allsvenskan 2022 season, and a quarter of the coaches have already taken the kick. It’s been exactly five years since I reviewed the cultural revolution that transformed Swedish football from a long-standing paradise into one of Europe’s most underrated coaching markets.
The only thing that has happened since then is that the carousel has turned up two levels.
IFK Norrköping and Gif Sundsvall kick-started their summer break kick race, no surprise either way. When Malmo FF Now the divorce from the coach who was unfaithful to him and abandoned by Hammarby last winter, it is, of course, another thing. Same series, but a different split.
When MFF was looking for a replacement for John D. Thomason, she wrote that they were “too old to stand in one night,” and that they would feel good about the project’s creator after ten years of constant coach changes. When Milos Milojevic was presented as a solution to them, she wrote “How long will he stay? We will see.”
It was half season and half season.
It is very easy to understand the decision
Two of the top Nordic coaches got the kick, and either way it’s about what we, in the computer age, call the “core numbers”. Midtjylland could still reach the Champions League, but despite the success chose to get rid of Bo Henriksen, because he did not meet the requirements in the club’s clever odds book, which measures and identifies every move players and managers take as employees. Henriksen may have won a cup and taken Midtigland to Europe, but according to the computer, he was going in the wrong direction – so he had to leave.
On the other side of the strait, Andreas Jorgsson, Malmö FF’s sporting director who was previously selected by Midtjylland’s parent club Brentford, has now opted to end the collaboration with the coach he himself co-opted last winter.
The basic numbers in Malmö FF are not particularly difficult even to see.
It’s a very easy decision the teachers made, because there is no indication that another three months of patience will turn everything in the wrong direction.
When Milojevic arrived in Skåne, he was motivated by the fashion mantra of Swedish football. He was said to have been a “student”. Good at making requests. This is required in a club such as MFF.
Then came the casualties, then the losses. Then came the question marks about the aging framework, the lack of clear leaders, or the lack of leadership among existing leaders (Anders Christiansen is injured, angry, or both). There were frequent changes to the gameplay, until no one knew what kind of MFF would appear in the next half. Uneven, wobbly, untrustworthy.
Then Zelgiris came twice.
Then the car came.
The It is a complete failure
Malmö FF has failed in Europe before, they have more chances, and this decision is not just about that. It is based on the fact that almost no stock has been directed in the right direction for the past six months, that trust capital has run out, and that you no longer want to trust that a player’s team will switch to SM gold on pure core competency. This week Djurgården looked like MFF (very strong team, clear ideas, totally professional execution for a European meeting) while Malmö FF looked like any Bonke gang (without Bonke, then, or Lewicki, or any reasonable balancing power in midfield).
Perhaps I expected Milojevic to be able to smoke based on conflicts or personal harmony, and not because of the structural course of football in the wrong direction.
But here we are. Milos on the podium, MFF in square one.
The It is a complete failure.
Mighty Malmö, with its super efficient management and powerful Milos scouts, will once again put out fires. Enter with the same name in the draw, the same results that Ståle Solbakken and Kasper Hjulmand commented with their national teams, which qualified Jess Thorup for the Champions League, and which will be difficult to solve Kjetil Knutsen. Perhaps a phone call to Abi Hared, “Can you do what you normally do for a while, while we look further?”.
The last time they were looking, I picked up a skinny but racy coaching talent, with no appeal but Dr. Martens’ boots and a clear long-term idea of what he wanted in football.
Henrik Rydström will be satisfied that he has all the resources he needs. I think Malmö FF would be satisfied with it too.
