Tuesday, September 26, 2023
The Swedish Garrincha, Part 2
Roger Magnusson was born in March 1945 in the little town of Mönsteras on Sweden's south-eastern coast. His father was a good amateur footballer - an outside-right, like his son - and the young Magnusson imbibed the game from a very young age. It was a time when all aspiring wing artists looked for inspiration to the legendary Stanley Matthews, and from his earliest years Roger Magnusson, like the English doyen, developed his formidable technique by juggling a tennis ball in his back yard. And when it came to street kickarounds with his friends, he was the one who always wanted to pick his way through a crowd of opponents and score. "I was a dribbler as soon as I started playing," he recalled many years later.
Beginning his career at the Atvidabergs club, then in the Swedish second division, Magnusson quickly came to broader notice, and he became a regular in the Swedish junior team at the age of 16. In 1964, a few months after his 19th birthday, he made his debut for the senior national team in a Nordic championship match against Denmark. It was a memorable day for the young winger; a 4-1 victory in which he scored the final goal and excelled overall.
Foreign clubs immediately showed an interest in signing the youngster. The Atvidabergs club had as its patron the Facit homewares company, and the club chairman took advantage of the fact that Facit's South American representative was vice-president of Rio's Flamengo club to secure Magnusson a trial period in Brazil. The Mengão were keen to secure the teenager's services, but soon an even bigger name appeared on the horizon, as the Daily Mirror reported in early 1965:
"Is there a new Stanley Matthews or Garrincha on the Soccer horizon? Sweden, who play England in Gothenburg on Sunday, believe they have just that. He is Roger Magnusson, 19, who wins his SIXTH cap on the right wing against England. And the Swedes are not the only country raving about this youngster. Flamengo of Rio de Janeiro and Juventus of Turin have both made offers for him."
Juventus seemed a perfect fit. There had been a long history of Swedish players finding a home in Italy, beginning with the celebrated Gre-No-Li trio (Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl, and Nils Liedholm) who had starred for AC Milan in the fifties. Another of the 1958 heroes, the little winger Kurt Hamrin, had long been a fixture at Fiorentina.
The Turin club duly signed the new young star. But there was a small problem - one which was to recur, in various guises, throughout Magnusson's career.
In 1965, the Italian football federation enacted a blanket ban on foreign players in Serie A (unless, like the oriundi of the past, they were prepared to assume Italian nationality). Magnusson's was one of the first transfers to be affected by this new regulation, and Juventus were obliged to send him out on loan to Germany's Cologne. In the Bundesliga he was played out of position in a striking role, and failed to shine.
Back at Juventus at the start of the 1967/68 season, Magnusson was still subject to the foreigner ban, but Juventus had qualified for the European Cup, and were keen to use the young winger in their European ties. And so it was that, absurdly, Magnusson spent a season at Juventus in which he could not take part in the local league. His form in Europe was impressive - he scored two crucial goals which aided the bianconeri in their progress to the semi-finals - but not surprisingly, he was keen to move again after his bizarre sojourn in Italy.
It was his next club which would finally provide Magnusson with an environment in which he could flourish. More in Part 3.
