Olof Mellberg Turns Down Swedish National Team Captaincy Offer: Latest Updates

In the days Fotbollskanalen was able to reveal that Olof Mellberg was details away from becoming the new Swedish national team captain. The Swedish Football Association had formally offered the BP coach the job and everything indicated that the parties would come to an agreement.

But now comes a possible U-turn at the last moment.

Fotbollsthlm.se claims that Mellberg has chosen to turn down the confederation captaincy. The site further writes that it is unclear whether this is the 46-year-old’s final message to the union or not. It is also not clear what is the reason behind the sudden swing.

The football channel learns that Mellberg, at least until he received the job offer from SvFF, was positive about taking on the assignment. He must have received a contract proposal and people within the union must have been convinced that Mellberg was ready. The reason for the delay in finishing has been connected to the fact that they were waiting for word about Tony Gustavsson, who has a contract with Australia, and that they wanted both.

As it approached the training premiere for BP for 2024 – now on Monday – SvFF realized that it had to finish with Mellberg regardless of how it went for Gustavsson. Not least for the Allsvenskan club’s sake. Earlier this week, Fotbollskanalen revealed that Andreas Brännström is in high demand to take over BP in the event of a Mellberg resignation. It is also the scenario that BP has been working on recently and the club has only been waiting for SvFF to resolve the contract issue surrounding Mellberg.

According to fotbolsthlm.se, the club has gone so far with “Brännan” that they verbally agree with him to take over the men’s team.

The football channel was also able to reveal that Olof Mellberg wanted to bring his colleague Andreas Engelmark from BP to the national team’s staff. Something the club was aware of and Engelmark has connections to both Olof Mellberg and Tony Gustavsson. So he has worked with Mellberg in BP last season and he has also worked with Gustavsson in Tyresö.

The question is what will remain of SvFF’s investment in finding replacements for Janne Andersson and Peter Wettergren. In parallel with Mellberg, SvFF wanted to have Tony Gustavsson in the men’s national team, which the Soccer Channel reported on. Gustavsson has a contract with Australia’s women’s national team over the Olympics this summer and may therefore be stopped by the Australian federation, which does not want to let the Swede go.

Earlier in the recruitment process, SvFF was forced to move on from several candidates. For example, Graham Potter, Per-Mathias Høgmo and Jimmy Thelin have all dropped out for various reasons.

2024-01-04 20:38:00
#Information #cowturning #Mellberg #turns #national #team