Eivar Widlund

Eiwar Fritiof Widlund , partly also written Eivar Widlund , (born June 15, 1906 in Örebro , † March 31, 1968 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish football player . The goalkeeper , who won the Swedish championship with AIK , played five times for the Swedish national team .

Career

Widlund began his football career at Örebro SK . When AIK, who played in Allsvenskan and was still based in Stockholm at the time, was in danger of relegation in the spring of 1929, he brought him into the first division as a replacement for the previous goalkeeper Thure Westerdahl . There he ran up to the end of the 1928/29 season in six games and reached ninth place with the team after four wins and one draw in these games at the end of the season. He had established himself as a regular player and did not miss a minute of the game in the following two seasons. At the same time he had drawn the attention of those responsible at Svenska Fotbollförbundet to himself, so that the association's selection committee appointed him to the national team in 1930. In the course of the year Sigge Lindberg had guarded the goal of the national selection in most international matches , Widlund made his debut on September 28th in a 4-4 draw against Finland in the national jersey. Then he moved behind Anders Rydberg in the second rank and sat mainly as a substitute in games of the selection on the bench.

During the 1931/32 season , Widlund stayed 256 minutes in a row without conceding a goal. He made a decisive contribution to the fact that the club broke the supremacy of the Gothenburg clubs Örgryte IS and GAIS as well as Helsingborgs IF and became the first Stockholm club to win the Von Rosens Cup as a trophy for winning the national championship title in the Allsvenskan . At the side of Sven Andersson , Per Kaufeldt , Axel Alfredsson , Eric Persson and Wilhelm Petersén , he had played 21 games this season, only in the game against the later relegated Hallstahammars SK he was replaced by Bertil Linde . Although he was last used in goal of the national team in the same year, he was a member of the Swedish squad at the 1934 World Cup two years later . In the course of the tournament he was a substitute for Anders Rydberg , but was not used.

By autumn 1935 Widlund was a regular at AIK for long stretches. Then he inherited Gustav Sjöberg , who had accrued temporarily after his debut in 1932, finally between the posts, so that he ended his football career after 131 first division games for the club. At the same time he was active in ice hockey , table tennis and bandy for the club.

Widlund was married to the athlete Maj Jacobsson Widlund , who temporarily held the world record in the 80-meter hurdles and won the 1930 Women's World Games in Prague and won several national championship titles. Their daughter Ann-Cathrine Widlund , born in 1938, started a singing career. Widlund worked full-time as a salesman during his time as an active player. Later he took over his father-in-law's ship trading.