Modo signed Mattias Norlinder – after starting a fundraiser for the supporters.
It makes Robin Figren furious.
“It must come from the supporters themselves – not, as in this case, from a greedy club management,” writes the profile in GP.
Modo has long wanted to bring back Mattias Norlinder from North America. It was in Modo that he got his breakthrough, and after playing in Frölunda, the move went to North America, where, however, there was no NHL success, but instead playing in the AHL.
Great criticism
During the summer, Norlinder has been training with Modo and earlier this week the club announced that a signing of the player was possible – if they raised money from the supporters. The club started a fundraiser where the money poured in at a rapid pace, and after only two days the club had collected one million kroner, and now Mattias Norlinder is ready to play in the SHL club.
But many have reacted strongly to Modo wanting money from the supporters to complete the signing, especially as Modo is doing well financially, and especially as many believed that Norlinder was by all accounts already done. Now the former SHL player Robin Figren also reacts in a column in Göteborgs-Posten.
“I think we all agree that we understand that this recruitment is already done, but that you may have nicked a bit of the intended budget and need an extra penny to once again get a place within the framework,” writes Figren.
“Smells like greed”
Robin Figren believes that it sends the wrong signals when you “appeal for the fans’ steals in the middle of the summer”.
“I think it smells suspiciously like greed. I think it’s a bit like seeing a wealthy bloke in a pink shirt walking up and down the Avenue hoping to beg for ONE more glass of Moët,” he writes.
Figren also asks himself how it feels for a player, in this case Norlinder, to become a signing financed by the supporters.
“To slip out before a match knowing that that single mother chose to put the child support on a left forward ‘with potential’ in the third chain or that young lad in a match shirt who sacrificed 10 hours of screen time so that the mother and father would swish money for a new ice cream But, hey, no pressure!”, he writes.
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