The Football Tragic

Marseille's success in the first two seasons of the 1970s fired the ambitions of its charismatic chairman Marcel Leclerc, and he went in search of fresh recruits. Josip Skoblar had topped the French goalscoring charts in Marseille's two championship-winning seasons, but the Malian striker Salif Keita, of St. Etienne, had come a close second on both occasions. What better way to create a strike-force that would frighten all of Europe than by signing Keita as well?

It proved to be a terrible mistake, and no-one felt the effect of it more than Roger Magnusson.

The reason, once again, was the league's restriction on foreign players. Only two were allowed to play for a French club at any one time, and with Skoblar and Magnusson already at the Stade Vélodrome, Keita made three.

The truth was that Marseille, and the French federation as well, were desperately hoping that Keita would agree to become a naturalised Frenchman, as many players of African origin had already done. But they had misunderstood their man badly.

Salif Keita was an extraordinary figure. A revelation in his native country as a teenager, he was spotted by a St. Etienne scout and brought to France for a trial. The picaresque story of his journey to France is worth an article in itself, but suffice it to say that when he eventually got to St. Etienne and began representing the Stéphanois in Ligue 1, he hit French football like a bullet. A fast, powerful, technically adept striker who played in a refreshingly fearless manner, he immediately became one of the most prolific scorers on the continent.

Ever since the late sixties, with French football somewhat in the doldrums, the FFF had been keen to see Keita don the rooster jersey. What, after all, could he achieve playing for Mali? The transfer to Marseille, and the issue of the presence of two foreigners at the club already, seemed likely to tip the balance.

But Keita was a proud African, and a man of determination and resolve as well. He angrily rebuffed the blandishments of both the Marseille management and the French federation, and remained a Malian. He later became president of the Malian football federation, and his famous nephews, Seydou Keita and Mohamed Sissoko, both represented Mali when they could have played for France.

Keita's principled stand put Marseille in an awkward position. The Skoblar-Magnusson partnership had blossomed, but if the new star recruit was to appear, one of them had to be jettisoned. In the event, it was Magnusson who regularly found himself on the outer. In desperation, the club tried to convince Magnusson too to naturalise, but he was having none of it. "I'm a Swede, I'll always be a Swede."

Chaos followed at l'OM both in the boardroom and on the bench. Leclerc was overthrown, the club went through four coaches in 1973 alone (Marseille remains a world leader in manager recycling to this day), Keita left the club in a huff, and Magnusson followed shortly afterwards. Needing to recruit some big names to replace these two, Marseille signed Brazil's 1970 hero Jairzinho, and his compatriot and friend Paulo Cesar. Alas, Jairzinho was made of different stuff to the gentle Magnusson: within his first season, he received a lengthy ban for assaulting a linesman, and was quickly out the door. Marseille's fortunes in the seventies plummeted: in France, the decade was to belong to Keita's old club St. Etienne.

Then there was the matter of Sweden. Magnusson's club troubles again affected his fortunes with the national team, and by the time Sweden had squeaked through to the 1974 World Cup, he was out of the picture. Instead, it was his younger brother Benno Magnusson who took to the field in Germany, in a tournament in which the Swedes, inspired by the young forward Ralf Edström, did surprisingly well.

Magnusson moved on to Red Star of Paris, but a knee injury hampered his career thereafter. He spent two uneventful seasons in Paris, then returned to Sweden and amateur football. He qualified as a high school PE teacher, settled down with his family in the town of Kristianstad, and Planet Football largely forgot him. His great promise had been only very partially fulfilled.

And Magnusson today?

"I go for walks, I get out a bit, I do the shopping," he told an interviewer from the Marseille newspaper La Provence, who came to interview him on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 2020. The article was adorned with a photo of a beaming Magnusson surrounded by his five grandchildren. "One day, they'll understand what Magnusson meant to us [in Marseille]," the journalist commented at the end of the article.

A voracious reader who spends plenty of time in the local library, Magnusson still keenly follows the news from the part of the world that took him to its heart. He still speaks excellent French - with, touchingly, a distinct Provencal twang. He was prevented by illness from attending the opening of the new Stade Vélodrome in 2014, an occasion to which a panoply of former l'OM stars were invited. But he always makes sure to watch Marseille's games on TV when he can.

"75! Yes, I'm really old now. Josip [Skoblar] was 79 on the 11th of March. L'Équipe got that wrong, you know, they said the 12th, but it's actually the 11th..."

"I'm old, but life goes on. Thanks again for thinking of me..."

# posted by Mike Salter @ 9:00 AM