Eric Persson
Eric "Hövdingen" Persson (born April 19, 1898 in Malmö ; † June 9, 1984 ibid) was a Swedish sports official . Between 1937 and 1975 he was President of Malmö FF and was also temporarily involved in the work of Svenska Fotbollförbundet . He played a major role in the development of the club as well as Swedish football . As a member of the selection committee of the Swedish national team ( Uttagningskommitté ) he was responsible in particular for the team squad at the 1958 World Cup , when the national selection celebrated its greatest success to date and became vice world champion. In 2004 he was inducted into the SFS Hall Of Fame .
Career
Persson grew up as the son of a painter in the Malmö working-class district of Torpgatan . After initially playing in the company soccer team of the local chocolate factory, he became a member of Malmö FF in 1927. Since he showed himself to be a talent for organization, he was elected to the board of the association under the chairman Fritz Landgren just two years later . While the upper-class local rival IFK Malmö had been playing in the Allsvenskan for a long time , Malmö FF only rose to the top division in 1931 and established itself there as number one in the city after the competitor's relegation. In the course of the 1933/34 season , the Swedish federation uncovered payments to the players at Malmö FF and thus a violation of the amateur principle. Rumors say that this was done on the instructions of the local rival, so that Persson made negative comments about IFK Malmö all his life. As a punishment, the club was forcibly transferred to the second division and Landgren was deposed as president. Under the president CE Eriksson , the club returned to Allsvenskan in 1936.
In 1937 Persson inherited Eriksson as President of Malmö FF and hired Harry Lundahl as the new coach. Under his leadership, the team settled in the first division and won the district championship of Skåne in 1938 with players like Sture Mårtensson , Helge Bengtsson and Ove Karlsson . In 1942 Persson became chairman of the Föreningen Svenska Serien and a year later a member of the board of the Swedish Association. This made him the most important representative of the Allsvenskan interests in the association.
In the following seasons, the club developed under the direction of Persson, who acted parallel to his board activities as team boss, to one of the leading clubs in Sweden. Under the direction of the former player Sven Nilsson as coach, the team around Börje Tapper , Sture Mårtensson, Egon Jönsson , Helge Bengtsson and Kjell Rosén won their first championship title at the end of the 1943/44 season with five points ahead of IF Elfsborg and AIK the club's history. By winning the national cup against IFK Norrköping in the same year, the club also won the second double in Swedish football after Helsingborgs IF three years earlier. While IFK Norrköping dominated the championship until the end of the decade, Malmö FF won the cup competition two more times in 1946 and 1947. This made him the record cup winner, and the club then preserved the title ( as of the end of the 2010 season ).
Poster for the third championship of the club in 1950
Link to the picture
(Please note copyrights )
In 1947 Persson hired the Hungarian coach Kálmán Konrád , who modernized the style of play. After four championship titles, Malmö FF broke through the dominance of IFK Norrköping at the end of the 1948/49 season , which had to record some player departures in southern European professional leagues as a result of the Olympic victory in football in 1948 . In the two subsequent seasons, the club won the championship again and set several records. In the 1949/50 season , the club won 20 of its 22 games and remained without defeat, so that the team played out 15 points ahead of runner-up Jönköpings Södra IF . By the last matchday of the following season, she was a total of 49 league games in a row, spread over three seasons without defeat, before the relegated AIK ended the series.
Between 1949 and 1954 Persson was a member of the Swedish national team's selection committee for the first time. Consequently, in view of the success of the club team he directed, it was only logical that nine of the 22 players at the 1950 World Cup came from the squad of the Skåne club. Since the national team was also successful here and two years later in the soccer competition of the Olympic Games in 1952 as third, there was also an exodus of individual players to southern Europe at the Malmö Club. After he resigned from his position at Föreningen Svenska Serien in 1956, from the following year in the run-up to the 1958 World Cup he was back on the selection committee of the national team, which he then headed as chairman. He was also involved at the club level before the tournament and pushed ahead with the construction of the Malmö Stadium , which became the club's new home after the tournament. Together with Carl-Elis Halldén from IFK Norrköping, Einar Jonasson from IF Elfsborg and Acke Bergqvist from AIK, he was ultimately responsible for putting together the squad for the World Cup finals. After diplomatic decisions, two Malmö FF players were in the squad after the Swedish Sports Federation relaxed the amateur statute and allowed players from southern European leagues to be nominated for the national team for the first time. The team trained by the Englishman George Raynor in the course of the tournament around the international professionals Kurt Hamrin , Nils Liedholm , Arne Selmosson , Lennart Skoglund and Bengt Gustavsson reached the final, which was lost to Brazil .
Until he missed participation in the 1962 World Cup , he headed the selection committee, after which the association hired Lennart Nyman as a national coach for the first time. Also at club level he stepped shorter from 1962 and handed over the office of team boss to the former player Helge Bengtsson. In 1964, the club signed a new coach, the Spaniard Antonio Durán , who brought about an innovation boost in Swedish football with the establishment of the 4-2-4 system . Was the team of Malmö FF at the end of the 1964 season due to a less scored goal against the same point competitor Djurgårdens IF slipped past the championship, they won the sixth championship title in the club's history in the following season. With the team around players like Prawitz Öberg , Bo Larsson , Roland Andersson , Ingvar Svahn , Staffan Tapper and Krister Kristensson , the club won the Von Rosens Cup three more times for the Swedish national championship until 1971 and in 1967 when the national cup was resumed Competition.
From 1965 Persson became involved internationally and took over the management of the Intertoto Cup , which he held until 1974. In the same year he brought with the Englishman Bob Houghton again a coach personality to Sweden who promoted the local football. Under his leadership, the club won further championship titles in 1974 and 1975. 1975 Persson resigned from his presidency and handed over the official business at Malmö FF to Hans Cavalli-Björkman . Under his leadership, the club had won eleven championship titles and nine cup wins. Under Houghton, the club later reached the final of the 1978/79 European Cup - as the first Swedish team in a European final - and competed in the World Cup .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ svenskfotboll.se: "Malmö FF 100 år" ( Memento of the original from December 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on May 10, 2011)
- ↑ 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 10, 2011)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Persson, Eric |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Persson, Eric Hövdingen (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish football official |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 19, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Malmo , Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 9, 1984 |
| Place of death | Malmo , Sweden |