John Eriksson (soccer player)
John Rune "Jompa" Eriksson (born March 12, 1929 in Stockholm ; † March 24, 2020 ) was a Swedish football player . The striker , who scored ten goals in ten international matches for the Swedish national team between 1951 and 1955 , won the Von Rosens Cup twice for the Swedish national champions with the Stockholm club Djurgårdens IF . In 1955 he was the first Swedish goalscorer in the European Cup .
Career
Eriksson, who comes from Högalid , moved with his family to the Stockholm district of Hjorthagen at the age of ten . At the district club Värtans IK he made his adult debut in 1948 and appeared as a regular goal scorer.
As early as 1950, Birger Sandberg , the person in charge of Djurgårdens IF's team , invited Eriksson to an audition for the reserve team. However, the change did not materialize until the following year, when the club was looking for a successor to Hasse Jeppson who had migrated to Atalanta Bergamo . In the Allsvenskan he was immediately successful as a goalscorer, right on his debut in late July 1951 he scored his first first division goal in a 3-1 away win at Gothenburg club GAIS . Only a few weeks after his first division debut, the selection committee of Svenska Fotbollförbundet appointed him to the national team. In the 3-2 win over Finland on September 2, 1951, he turned the national team a 0-2 deficit when he scored the goal to the final score after equalizing with two goals from Arne Lundqvist . In the following years he stayed in the circle of the national selection, but was only used irregularly until 1955. The international match against the Hungarian national team in the autumn of 1953 stands out when he scored the final goal again ten days before the historic 6: 3 win of the Golden Elf against England in a 2-2 draw.
After the club took third place at the end of the Allsvenskan season in 1952/53 for the first time in the top third of the table, the team won the Swedish championship at the end of the season 1954/55 35 years after the championship, which was then still held in cup mode. With 33 plus points and thus four points ahead of runner-up Halmstads BK , Djurgårdens IF dominated the league and qualified for the first ever European Cup. After a 0-0 draw in the first leg against Polish representative Gwardia Warsaw , Eriksson scored the first goals for one in the 4-1 away win in the second leg with a hat-trick between the 5th and 22nd minute of the game - interrupted by the interim equalization by Krzysztof Baszkiewicz Swedish club in this competition. In the quarter-finals, the team failed with two defeats at the Scottish representative Hibernian Edinburgh , with both games being played in Scotland because of the winter that had already begun in Sweden. In the summer of that year, Eriksson received an offer from Toulouse FC to move to the French Division 1 . However, this was not sufficiently well paid for the newly married man that he refused.
After three seasons in the front midfield, Eriksson won the championship title again with DIF in the 1959 season. However, the success was followed by the crash, at the end of the following season the club occupied a relegation place. After 69 league goals in 123 Allsvenskan games, he left the club and joined the amateur club Vällingby AIK as a player- coach . He later founded a football school at Ängby IF and worked as a coach in the amateur field parallel to his professional activity in social work for young people, including 1968 to 1969 as the first full-time coach of the later first division club IF Brommapojkarna .
During his time at Djurgårdens IF, Eriksson took part in the team's overseas tours to the United States , Japan , China and - as the first team from the West - to the Soviet Union . In Japan, the team also competed against the Japanese national team in ice hockey . Especially since the club had players like Sven Tumba and Gösta Sandberg who were successful in both sports, a 9: 5 success was achieved in the comparison announced as an international match.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ dif.se: "John" Jompa "Eriksson har gått ur tiden" (accessed on March 30, 2020)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Eriksson, John |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jompa (nickname) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish soccer player |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 12, 1929 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Stockholm |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 24, 2020 |