How Lindelof has raised hopes of Swedish minnows
IF you had mentioned Vasteras to an English football follower a year ago it might only have sounded familiar to Leicester supporters or Premier League Panini almanacs.
Foxes defender Pontus Kamark, a member of Sweden’s 1994 World Cup overachievers, was the most high-profile footballer to emerge from the central Sweden city until Victor Lindelof broke into the Benfica team last year.
Vasteras is Sweden’s fifth-largest city with a population of just 120,000 but football has usually come secondary to ice hockey there. Overnight, though, the football team has become one of the country’s wealthiest clubs after United paid Benfica an initial £30.7m for Lindelof. Vasteras will pocket 20 per cent of the final fee.
Third-tier Vasteras’ most recent home match - a 5-3 victory over Akropolis - attracted a crowd of just 1,544 but the club is hopeful Lindelof’s transfer fee could be the ‘door-opener’.
“They see the money from Lindelof’s transfer as a platform to finally grow into a force in Swedish football,” said journalist Noa Bachner of Swedish paper Expressen. “They’ve put up a picture of Lindelof on the door to their VIP lounge to make it more symbolic.”
Lindelof’s emergence is startling. Kalle Granath was only 34 when he was appointed Vasteras coach in 2010 and oversaw a drastic overhaul which reduced the squad’s average age to 19.3 and escalated Lindelof’s development.
“We sacked our six most experience and most well-paid players,” Granath told M.E.N. Sport. “I didn’t think they had the right mindset to take the next step and I think they limited the way the young and upcoming players thought about what was expected of them.”
Lindelof was just 15 when he began training with the first team and what was remarkable about his fast-tracked development was he skipped the academy level.
“He went straight from playing against 15-year-olds to playing senior team football, so how do you manage and coach someone to take that transition?” Granath added.
“He weighed 67 kilos when he came up, but five months later he weighed 82 kilos and worked extremely hard in doing that, never complaining and always smiling.”
The adaptation in the gym continued on the pitch, where Lindelof started as a central midfielder.
“We could see he was smart with the ball,” said Granath. “At that age maybe the pace in central midfield was too high for him, there’s nothing strange about that.
“He made good choices in any position he played and the weeks and months went on and he pushed himself closer and closer to the starting XI and one day his name was the one everyone agreed on for the first team.”
Extraordinarily, the youthful Vasteras won the league and earned promotion.
Lindelof was soon appointed captain of the Sweden youth team and caught Benfica’s attention. Aged 17, he joined Benfica in November 2011.
Granath insists there was not a particular player Lindelof attempted to mimic, but he is believed to have idolised Mats Hummels and Swedish journalists have compared him with Gerard Pique and David Luiz.
“He’s extremely well liked,” Bachner adds.
“You’ll be amazed by his calm appearance, I’d say he’s the opposite of Pogba. When he returned to Vasteras last summer his old club asked if he has any time to come and pick up flowers, he replied with a question about when it suited them themselves.
“He also went back to get his driver’s licence last week, and has just bought an apartment in the city with his girlfriend.”
“He’s quite a down to earth guy,” Granath insists. “Nothing dramatic. You wouldn’t know he plays for one of the best teams in history.”
Vasteras will return to a Premier League sticker album soon.