PHOTO: Bildbyrån + Instagram
Bengt Johansson is one of Swedish sports’ greatest coaches ever.
With his legendary “Bengan Boys”, he changed the world of handball.
Now an old letter from the coaching icon to all players has been revealed.
Few Swedish sports managers have been as successful and as celebrated as Bengt Johansson from Halmstad. After leading hometown pride HK Drott to five SM golds, he had the great honor of taking over the Swedish national handball team in 1988.
Sweden’s greatness
It would be the beginning of an absolutely fantastic era for Swedish handball at the international level and the nickname “Bengan Boys” was born. With “Bengan” at the helm, Blågult conquered the whole world and became a major power for many years.
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The Swedish national team won an impressive 13 medals in 16 championships under Johansson’s leadership and there are 2 World Cup golds and 4 European Championship golds as the main merits. The only thing the legendary Bengan Boys never got to win was Olympic gold, they unfortunately lost three straight Olympic finals in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
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Bengan’s anger
Back in 1990, the very first championship medal came for Bengan Johansson when he led Sweden to a sensational World Cup gold in Czechoslovakia. And it was actually men’s handball’s first since 1958.
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But unexpectedly, the incredible performance was not rewarded with the glorified Bragdguldet in 1990, sparking huge anger from the coaching icon. He could not at all understand how the tennis legend Stefan Edberg instead, it received the award the same year.
Private letter
Now the national team player has Staffan Olsson revealed the private letter Bengan sent out to all his players, venting his anger.
“World champion! There was no feat gold, which pissed me off, saddened and upset. Upset partly because they cannot distinguish between achievement and feat, partly because of the composition of the jury. 2 members who sponsor the Stockholm Open (Torekull, Sylwén) together with Tommy Engstrand, known tennis fanatic”, writes Bengan in the letter published on Instagram, see it below.
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For those who pay attention, you can find a lot of goodies in this old letter from Bengan Johansson, which you can read below in its entirety. Partly the way he uses quotation marks a bit too much, it also offers incredibly detailed travel information and almost best of all:
“Those who have not yet submitted their visa application for the Baltic Cup – DO IT!”.
Bengan Johansson and the Swedish national handball team would, however, get their big revenge on the bragdjuryn when they won the Bragdguldet in 1998. On May 8, 2022, the coaching icon passed away, aged 79, and was mourned throughout sports Sweden.
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See the letter: