Simon Bank: Is there a pain threshold for how wrong this big club can bet
Pending confirmation, let me confirm:
In my world Henrik Redström to Malmö FF would be the most exciting thing we’ve seen in Swedish football in the 2000s.
When the year of success 2021 was about to slip awesome year 2022 (although no one knew that at the time) was Malmo FF In search of a coach. They had to appoint their eighth coach in ten years, and now they will appoint their eleventh coach in eleven years. Turnstile jumper.
It was an important decision they had to make back then, it’s a very crucial decision they have to make now. The sporting management of Sweden’s biggest club simply cannot fail again. I have complete confidence in Daniel Anderson, in Niklas Karlin, even in the competence of Andreas Jorgesson, but that’s secondary. There is a pain threshold for how wrong a top club can bet before criticism weighs too much. The Malmö FF series finale definitively showed how audiences of more committed supporters viewed last year’s fiasco.
Now I have reason to go back to what I wrote then, before Milos Milojevic, the Georgeson disaster and the replacement of the hurried.
Never cross the line
I wrote that it was time for Malmö FF to launch a project whose flight would take longer than a season or two, and that they would feel good about hiring a coach they could grow together. Three, four or five years, a legitimate guy comes in instead of a driver who grabs, runs his race and then starts exploring against better horses.
I wrote that they should hire Henrik Rydström.
Of course, I still think so, and according to reports from naturally informed journalists (Sportbladet acquaintance, Josip Ladan, Fotbollskanalen), so is Malmö FF. Rydstrom himself vehemently denies that anything that would be obvious, could be semantics or fact, but there is smoke around the hypothesis anyway.
And if this is true: why is it any good?
You never know, but there are things that make the idea so exciting.
Partly the project idea – everything I know about Henrik Rydström tells me he wouldn’t be interested in the job at all if he didn’t come up with an idea about long-term ideas and development. Partly because Malmö FF is at a tipping point that is as much a threat as it is an opportunity. And in part, Henrik Rydström is Henrik Rydström.
Sometimes I define a certain category of people as 51%, and this also applies to football players. Definition, to me, is the kind you come to go through horribly rough times, but love with all your heart. They’re one percent away from being unbearable, but you decide they’re absolutely beautiful. Raydan, Hinky, is on the verge of complacency, but I never feel like he’s overstepping the mark.
Most tickle I’ve felt in modern times
He’s warm, generous, analytical, intelligent, intellectual (he’s essentially a scholar of literature, not in the culture minister’s way), and an exotic bird in a sometimes committed football environment. Once he took over the coaching position, I became curious, when he emerged from the shadows in the form of Nanne Bergstrand and cut the umbilical cord back to Kalmar’s home ground, this was a very necessary move for him to grow.
And it grew. The Redstrom I met in Kalmar was totally inspiring, immersed in building a football team. The result was exciting, taking Kalmar FF from Valley of the Shadow of Death to fourth, from depression to belief in the future. And he did so with minimal resources, without a significant support device. There were things he wanted to do, and there wasn’t enough time for them.
In Malmö FF he will get all the resources he needs, all the help he needs. A promising young Swedish coach with that kind of support – nothing in the past could compare to what Graham Potter fired at Östersund, but no one knew that beforehand. This equation would be the most sensitive thing I’ve come across in modern times.
If it works? nobody knows.
MFF must change generations
The beloved man of Listerby may not get along with Bobby Malmo, the project coach may not get the time he needs in a demanding club, an unproven captain may not replace the European outlook, but it would be very interesting and well, if a major Swedish club dared to test this kind of wing (Two days after AIK gave the reins to Andreas Brännström.)
If Redstrom presents himself, he will have a task as difficult as it is tempting. MFF has to change generations, there are tough decisions to make and very little scope for mistakes after 2022.
Henrik Rydström made Kalmar believe again. If he makes Malmo do it, an entirely different kind of horizon awaits.
It will show that Swedish football has self-confidence, and that will be beneficial for more than MFF.