In January, Fotbollskanalen revealed that the Swedish Football Association had been in contact with Jon Dahl Tomasson about the vacant job as national team captain for Sweden’s men’s national team. At the time of that dialogue, the Danish manager bossed Blackburn in the Championship.
A little more than two weeks ago, when the former MFF coach was about to leave Blackburn, the podcast Tuttosvenskan reported that the 47-year-old verbally agreed with SvFF. At the time, Fotbollskanalen’s sources stated that Tomasson was the association’s clear first choice, but that there were still details to be resolved in order for the employment to go through.
Since then, things have gone in the right direction. The Dane has officially said goodbye to Blackburn and the financial arrangement required to make him Janne Andersson’s replacement is something that a pressured association has judged to be able to handle, the Football Channel learns.
Also concerning other issues such as the staff around the national team captain, they have landed on a plan: for example, that Tomasson brings his assistant Remy Reijnierse to Blågult, the Fotbollskanalen learns. The two have worked together in both Malmö and Blackburn.
Information to the Football Channel states that the association must also bring in another resource for Tomasson in the staff, either an analyst or an assistant. You could have thought that the U21 national team’s national team captain Daniel Bäckström would be conceivable when he worked with Tomasson and Reijnierse in Malmö FF in 2020. But the collaboration didn’t really work, according to what Fotbollskanalen has learned, and Bäckström stepped down after one season.
In the past, Bäckström has been a name that SvFF considered for a role in the leadership staff and he led the national team that was in Cyprus in January. Then parts of Janne Andersson’s staff were included during the camp and it remains to be seen how a new national team captain views their roles where some are employees and others are consultants.
There are still things to be resolved before the confederation can present Jon Dahl Tomasson, but right now most things say that he will take over the men’s national team and become Sweden’s first foreign confederation captain ever.
British media, such as the Sun, have previously reported that Blackburn wanted compensation if Tomasson gets a new job in the near future.
One who has been driving around the track concerning the former MFF coach is SvFF’s football manager Kim Källström, several sources state.
– Kim has been clear that he wants a former player in as national team captain, says a source with insight.
The Danish coach, since SvFF was in contact with him the first time, has shown great interest in the assignment as Blågult’s national team captain. Recently, he received a request from the German big club Hamburg, but he chose to dismiss it early, according to bold.dk.
Jon Dahl Tomasson was on the cards for SvFF even before they chose to try to recruit Olof Mellberg and Tony Gustavsson, a track that crashed after a deal with Mellberg fell apart at the last moment.
After that setback, the association took a look at the process and looked, among other things, at names that had been on the list earlier during the process. Jens Gustafsson was one that was relevant, but the association has not gone further there, and Pogoń Szczecin looks like they will be able to keep their coach.
The association then decided to go for Jon Dahl Tomasson, whose future at Blackburn had become even more uncertain over time and the fact that the association’s football manager Kim Källström was involved from the start meant that his desire to have a former player had an impact.
– I am convinced that Tomasson has good qualifications for this job, said SvFF’s general secretary Andrea Möllerberg on TV4’s Efter Fem recently.
As a coach, Tomasson has worked for clubs such as Excelsior, Roda and MFF. He has also been the assistant national team captain for Denmark’s men’s national team, between 2016 and 2020 when Åge Hareide took the team to the round of 16 of the World Cup in Russia and to the EC. As a player, he made 110 senior international appearances for Denmark and represented clubs such as Feyenoord, Milan and Newcastle.
