Freddie Ljungberg interview: insights, errors and memories of being sent off « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
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In this interview given just before the game with Tottenham H Freddie spoke at the launch of the Barclays Global Fans Survey – a survey by Barclays to find out the views of Barclays Premier League fans around the world. The interview appeared in the New Paper, Singapore. It is transcribed by Guo Sheng, to whom many thanks. There is a brief commentary at the end.
Q: You were part of the great Arsenal team not so long ago. How does it feel to see the Gunners struggling that badly at the moment?
Freddie: I’m a great fan of Arsenal. So, to see the huge gap at the top of the table, points-wise, makes me very sad.
Q: Former Arsenal player David O’Leary recently said that the Gunners are let down by the senior players. Do you agree?
Freddie: I wouldn’t say that.
There are many questions that need to be asked, obviously. They need to look at what had gone wrong along the way. They haven’t won anything for seven years, and that’s a long time for Arsenal. It’s too easy to just blame the senior players. There’s a big discussion about Arsenal now. I can only compare the Arsenal now with the Arsenal of my time. We used to buy players from the top every season. Gilberto, the midfielder, came as a World Cup winner with Brazil. Likewise, Sylvain Wiltord, a European Championship winner with France. Getting these top players made us better. Their approach is different now.
They are turning to the young players and hoping to groom them into something great. In some way, that’s a good thing. But they haven’t won anything for years. Maybe they can go back to investing on big players. The young players can lean on a big player like Patrick Vieira. That way, they can get better too.
Q: How important is it for Arsenal to hold on to Robin van Persie in light of the circumstances?
Freddie: Van Persie is an amazing player. He scores plenty of goals, so of course he is an important player. But when you have players in different positions who can score, it makes it harder for the opponents to defend against. I’m sure any coach would prefer this than a single prolific goalscorer. Arsenal’s problem is that they don’t have players from other positions who can score the goals for them. It’s not healthy that van Persie scores such a big percentage of Arsenal’s goals.
Q: How confident are you of them finishing in the top four this season?
Freddie: I hope they do. It looks uncertain at the moment though. In the past, finishing among the top four is guaranteed. So obviously, they are going through tough times. I just hope they can make it.
Q: Do you think the power in London has shifted from Arsenal and Chelsea to Tottenham Hotspur?
Freddie: Arsenal and Chelsea are struggling. Spurs are obviously doing very well and many people are saying that they are the new force in London. We’ll see. But Arsenal are too big a club to be happy with this. Two days after I joined Arsenal, Pat Rice the assistant manager, said something to me. He told me that Arsenal must win something every year. This is how big the club are. I hope things will change soon, and Arsenal can regain their position as the top club in London.
Q: Do you get the feeling that Spurs might actually be the favourites on Arsenal’s ground for the first time in many years when they play Arsenal today?
Freddie: I hope not, not at the Emirates Stadium. But Spurs are 10 points ahead of Arsenal in the Barclays Premier League, and that’s a lot of points. At least the players now have an opportunity to close the gap. And they are also fighting for the bragging rights.
Q: Do you agree with the view that van Persie is the only Arsenal player good enough to appear in Spurs’ starting 11?
Freddie: No, I don’t agree with that. Arsenal still has many good players. As a team, they have to stick together. Don’t forget that they also went through a lot of injuries this season. I won’t tell you who I think are good enough to go into Spurs’ starting 11 because I don’t like to talk about specific players.
Q: And so you think Arsene Wenger is still the right man to lead Arsenal?
Freddie: He has done some amazing things for the club. They are where they are now because of the things he has done for them, both on and off the field. But we still need to ask the same question of why they haven’t won anything for seven years.
When David Dein left the club, it was worrying. Dein was the connection between Wenger and the board. After he left, Arsenal have not been competitive since. I think it is one of the reasons for Arsenal’s decline. Dein pushed a lot of things for Wenger. He pushed for spending money in the transfer market. Arsenal bought more players back then.
Q: How do you think today’s game will go?
Freddie: Three-One to Arsenal. The Gunners have been through a tough couple of weeks, and this is a chance for them to get back on solid ground. Matches against Spurs are always massive. Arsenal will want to send out a message in this game.
Q: Any memorable incident from the North London Derby?
Freddie: I scored in a few derbies during my time there. Unfortunately, the one incident that sticks in the head is a sending-off, which remains my only red card in my career. It was at White Hart Lane in 1999.
The referee made a meal out of it. It was on the end of a bad tackle, but I wanted to get on with the game, so I pushed a player to get the ball back. Then all of a sudden, a spectator threw a coin towards the pitch and it hit David Ginola’s head. The wound started to bleed.
The players from both sides then started to surround one another. In the chaos, I was sent off. The referee told one of my teammates that I head-butted Ginola, but I wasn’t even close to him.
Q: We heard you were pretty good with your hands as well, and was called up to the Sweden handball national team as a teenager. Was it a tough choice to pick football over handball in the end?
Freddie: That was correct. Handball is a huge sport from where I came from in Halmstad, and that was the time when Sweden were doing well in the Olympics. When I was 15, my football coach asked me to make a decision. I love football more than handball, so it wasn’t really that hard to decide.
Q: You have just left Japanese side Shimizu S-Pulse. How was the experience?
Freddie: I’m a big sushi fan. You can’t get better sushi than in Japan. I had a great time there. I was supposed to stay for another year but because the club cut their budget, I had to go. I love the country and its amazing culture. The respect they show for one another is fantastic. Usually a player would get angry at being substituted in a game. In Japan, when a player is replaced, he bows to the fans at all sides of the stadium, as well as the manager.
Q: Any plans to return to the Barclays Premier League?
Freddie: Unfortunately, I will have to wait for the next transfer window to open before I can play. There have been many interested clubs. I would love to play in the League again.
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Commentary by Tony Attwood, chair of the AISA Arsenal History Society.
Quite clearly the contentious issue here (given the absence of any revelations about throwing pizzas) is Freddie’s thought that proven winners were purchased in the old days, but now it is all down to kids.
Because Freddie played for the club we have to show him deep respect but I believe he is a little mistaken in his thoughts on this point.
If we look at the players Arsene Wenger introduced in the earlier part of his career we see quite a mix. Freddie cites Patrick Vieira as a purchase. Patrick was a young player who did not yet have an international pedigree – indeed when purchased for £3m he was languishing in the reserves at Milan doing nothing in particular and on offer for a knock down price. Likewise one could add that when Thierry Henry came he was hardly a household name – you would probably only have known him as an under 18 international who had not made it. Freddie himself, although an international (working from memory I recall him playing for Sweden against England just before coming to Arsenal), was hardly an international star.
And indeed if we go back to Gilberto, yes he was with Brazil, but we got him for £2m. Even allowing for inflation, that suggests he was not thought of as a world-wide established star who could adapt to English football.
Who else was Mr Wenger bringing in at this time? Nik Anelka – unknown 18 year old who couldn’t get into the PSG team. Highly spoken of, but with doubts about his personality. £250,000 compensation. Remi Garde on a free. Petit – a defender who had never played midfield before Mr Wenger transformed him.
Where Freddie is right is with Pires and Wiltord – both established players – although Wiltord left at the end of his contract, and we must remember Pires didn’t really look at all right in his first year until Mr Wenger changed his style of play to allow him to link with Henry. Where his memory fails is with David Dein’s pursuit of Reyes and the high fee paid for him. It wasn’t always “pay top, buy the best” – sometimes it failed too.
So my point is that many of the players bought in this era were not as established as we might think – they went on to be established later. And some who were established never made it. So I would make the point that there were errors and cock-ups too. Boa Morte certainly never made it. Nor did Chris Wreh (who was once preferred in a cup final to Ian Wright). Youngsters were brought in – Aliadiere who never made it, and Clichy, playing in semi-pro football in France, who did. Some stepped up from the youth team – Cole is the obvious example of a fast track youngster. Some were bought in as footsoliders like Grimandi – much derided for his part in the 6-1 defeat at Old Trafford, and some took a while to arrive – like Edu whose passport was apparently a fake, which resulted on him being put on a plane back. Some were disasters – like Stepanovs. Some were amazing deals – I don’t have to list them, as they became legends.
But we also had, in for example Edu and Wiltord, players who refused to re-sign for us.
My point is that whereas today each failed player, each player who will not re-sign, is seen as a sign of Mr Wenger’s inability to cope, in those days, such matters were accepted as being part and parcel of football. In today’s world we buy Arshavin and it doesn’t work – we forget the buying of Reyes – and it not working. Where we used to shrug, now there is endless mindless abuse.
What is different is not, as Freddie says, that then we bought internationals and now we buy kids, but rather two quite different things. First, at the start, expectations were low. We had had the awful, awful, Graham departure year, followed by the awful Rioch year. And Wenger was unknown.
Second, in those early days, there was no transfer doping – a system I have described before, in which every Arsenal target is instantly offered to Man City, PSG and Chelsea at double the price. Mr Wenger could stroll around the footballing world and pick players of his choice, many of whom were simply there and available, with no other club in contention.
Remember, in those first days Adams said of Wenger, “What does he know of English football?” So if Mr Wenger went for a failed French centre forward who played on the wing, or a mid-fielder who was coming from Milan reserves, the rest of the football world would have said, “Fine – we certainly don’t want players like that. What does Wenger know of English football – all these foreign players will never work.”
So, Freddie, in my humble view, you are wrong. It is not the lack of Dein, nor the lack of buying experience. It is the change in the football world with the financial doping leading to transfer market doping. I, of course, have never played football at anything above local level. You were wonderful as a player. I only beg to differ because I study Arsenal’s history. Of course that is nothing compared with playing for the club, but it does give me just a little insight.
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