Agne Simonsson

Agne Simonsson 1960

Simonsson (m.) In the 1958 World Cup final in a duel with Brazilian goalkeeper Gilmar (l.)

Agne Simonsson (born October 19, 1935 in Gothenburg , Sweden , † September 22, 2020 ) was a Swedish football player and coach . The striker , who played part of his playing career in Spain, was runner-up with the Swedish national team at the 1958 World Cup. A year later he was awarded the Guldbollen as Sweden's Footballer of the Year. He later worked as a coach and once won the Von Rosens Cup for the Swedish national champions.

Career

Simonsson started his career at Örgryte IS . With the multiple Swedish champions, he made it to the second division in 1955 as the season winner of Division 3 Västra Götaland . After a fifth place in the first season he reached with the club in 1957 the relay win in Division 2 Västra Götaland , after two defeats against Motala AIF in the promotion round, however, promotion to the Allsvenskan was missed. Nevertheless, he played his way parallel to the national team, in which he made his debut as a second division player on October 13 of that year in a 5-2 win against Norway and as a two-time goalscorer alongside the other scorers Gösta Sandberg , Gunnar Gren and Jan Ekström shone. As a result, he established himself in the national jersey and was part of the squad at the 1958 World Cup. As a regular player, he played five of the six tournament games for the team with which he moved into the final. In the 2: 5 final defeat against Brazil , he scored his fourth tournament goal with the goal to the 2: 4 intermediate result.

At the end of the year Simonsson repeated the relay win with Örgryte IS. With two victories against Landskrona BoIS the promotion to the first class was achieved this time. In the first division season in 1959 , he led the team with eleven goals this season at the side of center forward Rune Börjesson , who was the top scorer, as a promoted fourth place in the table. He was also able to convince on the international stage and scored two goals in the 3-2 away win of the Swedish national team at Wembley against the English national team - the second home defeat against a continental European team - and prepared the third goal scored by Bengt Salomonsson . Because of these achievements, he received the Guldbollen as Sweden's Footballer of the Year at the end of the year.

Simonsson had made a name for himself internationally and moved to Spain for Real Madrid in the summer of 1960 . There he could not displace the attackers around Alfredo Di Stéfano and was awarded after a few appearances after a season to Real Sociedad San Sebastián . Here he was used more often, but decided to return to Sweden in 1963.

At his old club Örgryte IS, Simonsson showed his old scoring potential and was one of the three most accurate players in the Allsvenskan in the 1965 season. He succeeded in this the following year, before he was only overtaken by Dag Szepanski from Malmö FF in the 1967 season . In the same year he ended his national team career after 51 internationals in which he had scored 27 goals. In the following year he scored eight goals and had to start the second division with the club as bottom of the table. As the season winner of Division 2 Norra Götaland and surviving the promotion round without losing points, he managed to get promoted again with the club before ending his active career a short time later.

Simonsson took over after the end of his playing career in 1971, the coaching post at Örgryte IS, which he held until the following year. Between 1977 and 1982 he was in charge of the Gothenburg club BK Häcken before taking over ÖIS again. After he had only finished eighth and ninth place in the first two years, he led the team around players like Sören Börjesson , Jan Hellström and Glenn Martindahl in the 1985 season as third in the championship round . After two victories over Kalmar FF in the semi-finals, he met local rivals IFK Göteborg , who were defeated after a 4-2 first leg win despite a 2-3 defeat in the second leg. He could not confirm the success with the club, in the European Cup of National Champions in 1986/87 the team failed in the first round at the GDR representative BFC Dynamo and only finished ninth in the league. Therefore, he was replaced by Bob Houghton after the end of the season .

Web links

• Aftonbladet sport: Guldbollen 1959: Agne Simonsson, Örgryte. In: aftonbladet.se . November 12, 1998(Swedish). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Benjamin Thorén: Legendary Agne Simonsson död. In: SVT Nyheter . September 23, 2020, accessed September 24, 2020 (Swedish).