SWEDEN’S THEATRE OF DREAMS Potter has recipe for success down to a fine art
FOOTBALL fairytales come along once in a generation.
Leicester City wrote theirs last season.
And an Englishman is at the heart of another, in Sweden.
A journeyman professional turned manager, Graham Potter, has lifted a tiny club from the fourth tier to the top flight.
And what is more interesting is the method he has employed to do the startling business.
For, with the help of a visionary owner, Potter has created a culture club. And its thinking outside the box is reaping rich rewards inside the box.
Potter, 41, was a player whose main claim to fame was a handful of Premier League appearances with Southampton and a solitary England Under-21 cap.
But if Claudio Ranieri caused grown men to rejoice on the streets of the east Midlands, then Solihull-born Potter has brought about the same reaction in the small town of Ostersunds.
It is marketed as being at the centre of Sweden. It’s also in the heart of Scandinavia.
It’s actually in the middle of nowhere.
A seven- hour drive from Stockholm to a place where it stays sunny for 24 hours a day in the summer and is dark for months in winter, Potter had to create a unique selling point to attract players.
And he found it in an unusual place – the arts.
Potter said: “We wanted to create a culture academy. It is something unique to our club. If you are trying to sell it to a player, it’s a difficult one because we are miles away from anywhere.
“We had to give them a reason to come. So we offered to take them out of their comfort zone. You buy into it – or you don’t.
“Let’s face it, footballers are comfortable around their own. Ball, pitch, goalposts. They know where they are.
Confidence
“We wanted to develop them as people, build their confidence, their self-awareness, so we put aside time in their working week to complete a project.
“In our first year, we wrote a play and put on a show in front of 300 people.
“I had to get involved myself. We had to rehearse, produce and perform it. It was a straightforward tale, it was about our own journey as a football club.
“But t he c l ub hi r e d professionals to help us. We take it seriously. Then we did a dance project based on Swan Lake, but with contemporary dance. For the next one, we had a concert. I had to sing the regi onal song, the Jamtland anthem in front of 1,600 people.
“I’ve been to seminars and one of the buzzwords in professional coaching is taking a more ‘holistic’ approach to it.
“Will it help you pass the ball any better? No. Will you tackle more successfully? No.
“But what this might do is develop your confidence, your self- awareness. I’ve seen it develop empathy in people where, before, there was none.
“How does this improve their football? I’d say, I’m improving the person. If I deliver a more rounded, confident and outgoing individual, it will make them a better person.
“And you were a person long before you b e c a me a footballer.”
Potter was looking for his next professional challenge and ended up in a town of 50,000 inhabitants, who didn’t quite understand why he was there.
He said: “I was playing in the lower leagues and not enjoying it as much as I should have. I didn’t want the game to kick me out, so I decided to do something.
“I went into coaching, gaining my teaching qualifications at the same time. I did a Masters at Leeds Carnegie and was looking for my next step when I spoke to Graham Jones, who was Roberto Martinez’s No.2 at Everton.
“He told me about this club. The chairman wanted an academy manager. I went out with my wife to meet him. In between getting that job and starting it, the club were relegated. So he asked if I wanted to be the manager.
“I couldn’t have done this without my wife Rachel. We came out here with our son, who was 11 months old at the time. Six years later, we’re still here.
“The owner Daniel Kindberg is a character, an entrepreneur, who had a vision. He said we’d be promoted. He said we would reach the top division. We have.
“We finished eighth in our first season among the elite. Now he wants European football. And after that, the Champions League.” And what about this year’s project?
Potter said: “It’s going to be about the Sami people, they are indigenous to this part of Sweden, Finland and Norway – you know, Lapland, reindeer, that sort of thing.”
Of course. It’s Father Christmas. Another fairytale to sit nicely alongside the one Potter is busy writing in Ostersunds.