Tommy Soderberg

Tommy Soderberg

Tommy Söderberg (born August 19, 1948 in Stockholm ) is a Swedish football coach . He is best known as a long-time supervisor of the Swedish national team, with which he participated in several international tournaments.

Career

As a football player, Söderberg acted exclusively in the amateur field. He ran for the clubs Ängby IF and Continental .

He began his coaching career in the 1970s . In his rookie years he only got coaching jobs in lower Swedish leagues. After his first station at BK Väster , he took over training in the youth area of IF Brommapojkarna for several years . From 1980 he was in charge of Spånga IS , before returning to IF Brommapojkarna in 1982 as the main coach of the men's team. He had his breakthrough as a coach at the Stockholm club Djurgårdens IF , which he took over in 1986 in the second division and two years later in the Swedish first division . In 1991 he became the coach of AIK , and just a year later he led the team from Solna to the championship title.

Söderberg has been working for the Swedish Football Association since 1993, initially as a coach for junior teams. When national coach Tommy Svensson resigned from his post in 1998, Söderberg took over responsibility for the senior national team and qualified for the 2000 European Championship .

In 1999 the Swedish Federation decided that two coaches should be primarily responsible for leading the national team. His previous assistant Lars Lagerbäck became a national coach with equal rights. Söderberg and Lagerbäck led the team to the EM 2000 and the 2002 World Cup , as well as the 2004 European Championship . At the 2002 World Cup, the team survived the preliminary round in the so-called "death group" with England , Argentina and Nigeria and was eliminated in the round of 16 only in extra time with a golden goal against the Senegal team . At the 2004 European Championships, the team made it to the quarter-finals, where they were eliminated on penalties against the Netherlands . After the tournament, Söderberg gave his colleague Lagerbäck sole responsibility.

Söderberg took over the U-21 national team from his predecessor Torbjörn Nilsson in early 2005 . A short time later, Jörgen Lennartsson was placed at his side, with whom he formed a coaching duo. With the junior national team he reached the group winners of the play-off games to qualify for the U-21 European Championship in 2007 , but failed there against the Serbian U-21 national team . As a result, he prepared the team for the U-21 European Championship finals in 2009 in their own country, for which they were automatically qualified as hosts and in which the team only failed in the semi-finals on penalties to England. Shortly before the tournament, the association announced the extension of the coaching duo's contracts until 2011.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ svenskfotboll.se: "U21 herr: Två år till för Lennartsson / Söderberg" (accessed on June 15, 2009)

Web links

• Profile of U-21 coaches Söderberg and Lennartsson at svenskfotboll.se