disgracing himself for Helsingborg this week! That fanny should just get up ffs. Can’t believe he’s rolling around like a girl.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/atv/player.html?catID=26&clipID=10369
Sly little dig and I don’t think Henrik seemed too bothered by it because he seemed to be demonstrating what he did to the interviewer. He wasn’t long picking up the language was he?
http://www.sundayherald.com/sport/sh...251035.0.0.php
CLICHES ARE devices employed by the talentless to make genius manageable. We clods only make sense of the sublime with glib and meaningless phrases. Football, for whatever else it might be worth, proves the point.
Here’s a recent favourite. Every hack on the sofa offers it weekly. “Form is temporary,” they say, “but class is permanent.” They forget to add: “and then there’s Henrik Larsson”.
The little man was breaking hearts at Old Trafford last week. Sir Alex Ferguson was talking wistfully of how the Swede, if he chose, could be playing in the Premiership at 40. What he truly meant was a two-fold assertion.
First, that a player who could “only score in the SPL” has been more productive for Manchester United over 10 short weeks than certain starlets named Wayne. Secondly, that Ferguson’s club only earned the right to face Roma, next time, thanks to a little guy who prefers the wife and kids to another bucket of money. Champions League? Done that, won that.
In a world of non-genuises preening in their baby Bentleys, Larsson’s example is important. Ferguson taught him nothing. He exercised no patronage worth a damn and did not once dare to shout, bawl, or bully.
Larsson does not need his money, his glamour, or his psychosis. Here’s Henrik executing that inch-perfect strike when it matters most, almost for fun. Where’s David Beckham, at 32? Rodeo Drive? It’s not even funny.
Larsson is the best header of a ball since Denis Law: discuss. This isn’t a trivia quiz. Football’s pantheon contains any number of glorious failures. What counts most, finally, is the ability to take a craftsman’s care over the essential transaction: people pay money, I perform. That’s the deal.
The Premiership, bloated beyond all reason, has begun to lose sight of the fact. My guess is that Sir Alex is allowing himself another couple of years at Old Trafford in order to create yet another team: that’s his privilege, I think. That is, equally, the Manchester tradition.
But Giggs, Neville and Scholes, glorious as they have been, are enjoying their last hurrah. The team, like the coach, are no longer young, and the youngsters among them have yet to perform. What matters now is to transmit the virtues that Ferguson, raving like Lear, has embodied. Where’s the next Keane? Who might be the new Cantona? To put it no higher, the next generation had better not pin their hopes on Rio Ferdinand.
Instead, we have Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo. Bobby Charlton, who may know a thing or two, has been lavish in his praise of the latter while appearing to ignore the former. I doubt that it counts as an accident. What was the Great Comb-over in his finest days, after all?
He was the teenager who survived Munich. Rooney needs a bit of pressure? Try living through that slaughter. Charlton was also the finest striker of a ball ever. That’s ever, italics, by the way. Even Pele deferred. When old Baldy says that Ronaldo can do things no-one else has ever done before, the praise is lavish beyond words, but the criticism is implicit: where’s Rooney?
Why is Sir Alex still failing to extract genius from the great, white, pasty-faced hope of English football?
Larsson’s goal against Lille should be shown in every coaching class there is. The marking was dire; Ronaldo’s cross impeccable: that much is beyond argument. But how do you teach anyone to lose every marker, to merely “pop up” just like that? And how do you instil an imperative: we need to win, always?
Ferguson will miss Larsson, I suspect, less for the fact that talismans who have scored in every competition offered are hard to come by, than for the example he personifies, unassumingly, at every time of asking. What could make a Ronaldo complete? What might make a Rooney understand that talent and application always go together? Here’s Henrik, 35 and rising, saying that there is nothing you can show him. Nothing at all.
The hubris of English football needs this kind of corrective. Even Ferguson, in his cussed way, probably needs it. The player who says, and means, that he keeps his word to his hometown team. The player who does not stoop to foolish jousts with his coach. The player whose “media image” was never the point, nor purpose, of his trade. And the player whose reticence is an implicit comment on all those silly boys with too much money.
Possibly the most impressive thing about Larsson is that he is not much impressed by “Sir Alex”. Old Trafford assumed, I think, that when the cheque book appeared the little Swede would succumb, just like all the rest. In that context, Ferguson’s press conference last week was almost funny. Apparently, “the boy” - but let’s call him a man - couldn’t be bought.
The chances of Rooney or Ronaldo learning the lesson are remote. Those kids have agents and advisers the way dogs have fleas: they are stuffed, daily, baffled and bewildered, with “advice”. But here was Larsson’s last tutorial. Football need not be dishonourable. You don’t need an accredited pimp. You don’t need to engineer “interest” from Madrid or Milan every Monday morning.You turn up. You train hard. You keep your word. If dreams come true, you score goals.
That ethic is missing at Old Trafford. I suspect, listening to Frank Lampard’s 100,000 a week contract woes, it’s missing at Stamford Bridge. I see no signs of a craftsman’s virtue in Liverpool, or at the Emirates Stadium. Great football clubs are owned by trading companies called players.
But who kept Manchester United in the Champions League? Who allowed the dreary nostalgics to say “that’s how you score a goal”? And who allowed us to remember that a genius is worth every penny he might ever earn from a shoddy craft?
Little Swede. Black. Rising like a bird at dawn. I can almost bear to watch football again.
Thank you, Henrik, and good luck.
http://www.sportinglife.com/fanzine/...ER_Column.html
UNITED’S LARSS IS SWEDEN’S GAIN
By Frank Malley, PA Chief Sports Writer
At the risk of stating the obvious footballers do not always paint themselves in the best light. In so many ways.
Such as Anton Ferdinand, who told West Ham he was off to see his sick gran in the Isle of Wight when he was really having a knees-up with his mates in the United States.
Or Arjen Robben who keeps falling over in penalty areas for no apparent reason and wonders why no-one loves him.
Or David Navarro, the Valencia substitute whose short-arm jab broke the nose of Inter Milan midfielder Nicolas Burdisso and sparked a Champions League free-for-all which made the Carling Cup fisticuffs seem like a toddlers’ tantrum.
Quite what goes through the minds of such footballers, if anything, is a mystery. It is certainly not the fact that they are being watched by millions of football lovers, many of them impressionable children who hang on their every word and deed.
If so they would realise that they come across as some of the slyest, most unprincipled ingrates on God’s planet.
But then there is Henrik Larsson. No false gloss with Larsson. No diving, no cheating. No fake promises.
With Larsson what it says on the tin is what you get.
And that is a striker who at 35 can still cut it at the highest level, his headed winner for Manchester United against Lille a demonstration in control and precision by a master of his craft.
A striker, too, for whom honour means more than medals.
It would have been so easy for Larsson to have been seduced by United’s pursuit of the treble.
So easy to have fallen into the welcoming arms of Sir Alex Ferguson for two more months at Old Trafford and imagined lifting the Champions League trophy for the second year running after being instrumental in Barcelona’s defeat of Arsenal last season.
So easy for Larsson to have been tempted by a potential FA Cup final and likely Premiership triumph which would have silenced those critics who maintain he only stayed seven years at Celtic because he was afraid the goals might have dried up if he had ventured south of the border.
But where Ferdinand lies, Robben dives and Navarro fights, Larsson keeps his word.
To home-town club Helsingborgs where he now returns for the restart of the Swedish season and to his wife Magdalena and two children who have put up with his commuting these past three months.
Larsson says: “I signed a contract with Helsingborgs last year and that’s a contract I have to honour.”
That’s also a sentence you do not hear too often in a sports world with a ‘me, me, me’ culture in which loyalty has gone the way of laced-up footballs.
Where Larsson’s honour leaves Manchester United’s trophy chase, however, is another matter.
With Louis Saha and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer injured, Larsson gone and Wayne Rooney having lost his sharpest edge suddenly there appears to be a lack of firepower just as the season reaches its most vital point.
“United can win the Champions League without me,” is Larsson’s verdict.
Perhaps they can. And if they do there will be those who will insist Larsson was mad for not grabbing the chance of a glittering finale to a fabulous career.
Others might conclude that he is one of the few footballers who has already given the sport far more than he has taken.
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Listening to a 55 minute interview BBC Scotland broadcast with the King tonight. Quality stuff. Will post it later.
So yeah,a superb 55 minute interview with the King of Kings that was broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland tonight. It charts his whole career but in particular his awesome spell with Celtic.
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/cgi/NGoto/194865346?-10583
Highlights of the interview:
On his move to Barca:
Murdo McLeod: ‘Was that the difference between Barcelona and Celtic the world class players around you?’
Henke: ‘I had world-class players around me at Celtic. The team that went to Seville was a world class team.’
On stopping the huns doing 10-in-a-row:
MML: ‘How long into the season was it before you realised how important stopping 10-in-a-row was?’
Henke: ‘I knew from the start but when we had the game against them on the 2nd of January and we could not afford to lose…then I realised it properly. The noise and atmosphere at the Nou Camp was great but it comes nowhere near to the noise at Celtic Park or even Ibrox. The noise that day was something incredible.’
MML: ‘How were you feeling coming up to the St Johnstone game?’
Henke: ‘We almost won it the week before and the header went in over Gould and we came back to Celtic Park and saw grown people crying. Boom! ‘You have to stop them. You have to’, they were saying. Then came the last game against St Johnstone. After 3 minutes I managed to find the corner but no one seemed to celebrate until Harald scored the 2nd. Then I knew. That was my first league title win in my career.’
MML: ‘The next season Rangers won the treble.’
Henke: ‘Why would I want to talk about them?’ (what a legend!)
On Martin O’Neill:
Henke: ‘I did not know very much about him at the time. He did not say much initially until we lost a friendly against an amateur team in Germany and he was absolutely furious. Gradually his team started to come in with a physical presence. I did not think about the presence until I came to Barcelona and saw there was no Mjallby, Valgaeren, Sutton or Balde. We were so dangerous in the air we knew that if their keeper kicked the ball we would win the second phase and be attacking straight away. Sutton was the best player I ever played with in a 4-4-2. He could set up goals, score them and always knew what he was going to do with the ball even before he got it. He played up with me, behind me, in midfield and at the back. What a player.’
On the Champions League, Seville and his departure from Celtic:
MML: ‘Where you disappointed about Celtic not making progress in the Champions League?’
Henke: ‘We were unlucky in the Champions League. You need your luck and twice we went out on 9 points.’
‘In the UEFA Cup a lot of teams underestimated us. Look at Blackburn, Liverpool, Celta Vigo they did not take us seriously. I still feel gutted when talking about Seville…(long pause as his voice starts trembling). I cannot find the words. It was tremendous on the run but I do not fondly remember any 2nd places in my career.’
MML: ‘How did you feel after all you had done in the final?’
Henke: ‘You win as a team you lose as a team. We were unfortunate as we had them but then Bobo got sent off and they managed to score. I do not have fond memories of that night. The Celtic fans were tremendous. We had 50,000 supporters and it was fantastic but we lost the game. When I grow older I may appreciate the day more. I do not even know what I did with my medal - perhaps I gave it to my son. Even winning the Champions League with Barcelona does not lessen the pain of losing the UEFA Cup Final.’
‘At that stage I was well past proving anything. I did not need to prove anything to anyone. I only need to prove things to myself. You can never take it away from me.’
‘In my last year I knew it was going to be a difficult season. I wanted to win the league badly and I did not want to leave without doing it.’
‘Last home game I could not take it any more and even sitting here I am ready to start crying again. I remember my last game at Celtic Park against Dundee United and I just thought, ‘I can’t take this any more’. I walked off the park and into the dressing room, put a towel around my head and wept like a child.’
‘It was a special 7 years that I would not want to change. It was fantastic. The Cup Final at the end of that season…Im not sure if it summed me up but I enjoyed my time at Celtic and loved it at Hampden. To finish by scoring 2 at Hampden was something special and I loved it, every second of it.’
On managing Celtic in the future:
Henke: ‘I already told Paul Lambert that he’s going to be the manager and I will be his assistant!’
A really class piece and great to hear the in-depth thoughts of such a legend.
Quality interview last night. The man is a legend. You have to wonder what might have been if we had him in the San Siro a fortnight ago.
Good work bandage. Excellent interview. Man is a first class legend.
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Him and pico my 2 favourite footballers excluding totti, both with cape verde connections
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He’s my all time number 1.
Him and Rory Gaffney.
And Adam Rooney.
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