Torsten Lindberg

Lindberg at the 1948 Olympic Games

Torsten Gustav Adolf Lindberg (born April 14, 1917 in Nässjö ; † August 31, 2009 in Malmö ) was a Swedish national football player and coach. The goalkeeper won Olympic gold with the Swedish national team and six championship titles at club level with IFK Norrköping as an active player. As coach of Djurgårdens IF he added two more championships to his collection of titles.

Career

Player career

Lindberg began his football career in 1934 as a goalkeeper at Husqvarna IF in Division II . In 1937 he went to IK Tord , before moving to IFK Norrköping in Allsvenskan in 1940 at the age of 23 . At his new club he established himself as a regular in goal. At the side of Birger Rosengren , Knut Nordahl and Lennart Wigren , he and the team initiated the club's most successful period in the 1942/43 season , when the Von Rosens Cup for the Swedish championship was won for the first time in the club's history . In addition, the team moved into the cup final against AIK . After the first game ended in a 0-0 draw, a 5-2 win in the repeat match won the trophy and thus the double .

With Lindberg as support, the team conceded only 23 goals in the 1944/45 season and since Gunnar Nordahl was also the top scorer, they succeeded in winning the championship again. This was crowned with a 4-1 victory over previous year's champions Malmö FF in the cup final with another double win. With a team that has hardly changed in terms of the regular team, in which only Georg Ericson was one of the eleven most frequently used players, the club defended the championship five points ahead of Malmö FF. Lindberg's team kept the dominant position in the following years and, after winning titles in the seasons 1946/47 and 1947/48, managed four championships in a row.

In 1947 Svenska Fotbollförbundet honored Lindberg's achievements and called the 30-year-old into the national team for the first time. In the 4-1 victory over the Danish national team on June 15 that year, he guarded the selection goal for the first time. As a result, he established himself in the national jersey and was a regular goalkeeper in the national team at the 1948 Olympic Games . With the team around the Nordahl brothers, Nils Liedholm and Gunnar Gren, he conceded only three goals during the entire tournament and won the gold medal of the football tournament after a 3-1 final victory over Yugoslavia .

The seasons following the Olympic tournament were mixed for Lindberg and IFK Norrköping and only places in the middle of the league were achieved. In the course of 1949 he got in the national team with Kalle Svensson from Helsingborgs IF a strong competitor for the place between the posts, which displaced him in 1950. Therefore, he only sat on the bench at the 1950 World Cup finals and had to watch how the competitor contributed to third place behind world champions Uruguay and Brazil and earned the nickname Rio-Kalle . On October 21, 1951, he came to his farewell game against Denmark and ended his national team career after 19 internationals. At the end of the 1951/52 season he ended his active career after 12 seasons and 243 first division games and retired with the sixth championship title of his career. In the same year he played with the club on the occasion of the celebration of Real Madrid's 50th birthday against the Spanish club.

Lindberg also played table tennis as a teenager at Rumlaborgs BTK and took part in regional championships for the club.

Coaching career

After the end of his active career, Lindberg moved to the coaching bench. He first worked as a trainer for IFK Norrköping between 1953 and 1954. Later he trained among others Motala AIF , IFK Stockholm , Djurgårdens IF, IK Sirius , AIK and Väsby IK . With Djurgårdens IF he managed to win the Swedish championship title in the 1964 and 1966 seasons. At the same time he worked with the Swedish national team between 1958 and 1965. As an assistant to George Raynor , the supervisor of the selection team, which at the time was still appointed by a selection committee, he and the team were runner-up in their own country at the 1958 World Cup finals .

successes

player

• Olympic champion: 1948
• Third in the world championship: 1950
• Swedish champion: 1943, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1952
• Swedish Cup Winner: 1943, 1945

Trainer

• Vice world champion: 1958 (assistant coach)
• Swedish champion: 1964, 1966

Web links

• Torsten Lindberg in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} folkbladet.se: "Torsten Lindberg död" (accessed on September 1, 2009)
2. ↑ ifknorrkoping.se: "En av IFK ´s stora har gått ur tiden" (accessed on September 1, 2009)
3. ↑ Svenskfotboll.se: "Torsten Lindberg död" ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2009 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 September 1, 2009)