Carl-Elis Hallden

Carl-Elis "Nalle" Halldén (born October 17, 1906 , † December 14, 1982 ) was a Swedish football official . Under his leadership as team boss ("lagledare") the IFK Norrköping took a dominant position in Swedish football in the 1940s . He was also involved in Svenska Fotbollförbundet and, as a member of the selection committee of the Swedish national team ( Uttagningskommitté ), was responsible in particular for the team at the 1958 World Cup , when the national selection celebrated its greatest success to date and became vice world champion.

Career

Halldén worked as a sports journalist. First he had joined the Norrköping club IK Sleipner , but later switched to local rivals IFK Norrköping. There he took over the position of team manager in 1940. The club had been relegated from Allsvenskan in 1937 and had only missed the return to the first division in the previous year in the promotion round after two defeats against the Stockholm club Hammarby IF . With coach Bengt Flisberg , who was hired by IK Sleipner , the club rose after success against Reymersholms IK . A year later he replaced the coach with the Hungarian Lajos Czeizler . With this and other groundbreaking personnel decisions - he convinced many young talents such as Eric and Oscar Holmqvist , Torsten Lindberg , Knut Nordahl and Georg Ericson to join the club - he led the club into its most successful era.

At the end of the 1942/43 season , the team led by Halldén won the Von Rosens Cup for the Swedish championship title for the first time and the double by winning the national cup in the final against AIK . In the following season, fourth in the table, the team then dominated the championship. By 1948 there were four title wins in a row, with a 4-1 victory over Malmö FF in the 1945 cup competition, the double win was achieved for a second time. By winning the gold medal of the Swedish national team at the soccer competition of the Olympic Games in 1948 , Swedish soccer had attracted attention across Europe and IFK Norrköping had also lost some players in southern European professional leagues. As a result, the club finished the season 1948/49 in seventh place in the table, Malmö FF subsequently became the dominant team in the league. The long-time master coach was also popular in Italy and so Czeizler moved to AC Milan . However, Halldén knew how to build a new powerful team around team captain Birger Rosengren with Bengt Gustavsson , Åke Johansson , Henry Källgren and Bengt Nyholm in the following years . At the end of the 1951/52 season , the club, trained by the new coach Karl Adamek , won the championship again.

During the season 1955/56 , which the club ended with the seventh league title in the club's history, Halldén handed over responsibility to the former player Georg Ericson. He himself moved up to the selection committee of the national team under the leadership of Eric Persson , the president of the rival Malmö FF. After the Swedish Sports Federation relaxed the amateur statute and declared that for the first time players from southern European leagues could be nominated for the national team, after some diplomatic decisions between the members of the selection committee, four players from IFK Norrköping were in the squad. The national team supervised by the Englishman George Raynor in the course of the tournament, in which the international professionals Kurt Hamrin , Nils Liedholm , Arne Selmosson , Lennart Skoglund and Bengt Gustavsson came into play, reached the final, which was ultimately lost against Brazil .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ idrottsforum.org: "Klassrivaler - Kamraterna och Sleipner i Norrköping" (accessed on May 11, 2011)
2. ↑ tomasjunglander.se: "Därför blev inte Sverige världsmästare i fotboll 1958"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on May 11, 2011)