According to Niklas Jihde, Mika Kohonen would be the best thing that could happen to the Swedish national team suffering from cabinet turmoil. Kohonen is not a foreigner in the eyes of the Swedes.
The Men’s World Floorball Championships will be held in Malmö, Sweden, from 7 to 15. december shows all matches in Finland on its channels.
Before the World Championships in Malmö, the Swedish Floorball Federation made a decision that made the blue-and-yellow athletes raise their eyebrows and open their mouths: the national team all-conquering the coaching duo Niklas Norden–Thomas Brottman has to leave his job after the final regardless of the result.
Considered by many to be the best floorball player of all time Niklas Jihde48, admitted on Wednesday to Urheilu that he could not understand the decision.
– Such an act towards coaches who have won everything right before the sport’s biggest celebration starts on our home field. Absolutely incomprehensible and styleless, says Jihde, who rose to the forefront of Swedish sports media at Viaplay after his active career.
What makes the future plans of the Swedish Floorball Association particularly interesting is that Finland’s all-time player legend Mika Kohonen is among the top candidates when a successor is being sought for the duo who will be moved aside. Koho is considered the number one candidate for e.g. An expert at the Swedish public broadcasting company SVT Mattias Samuelsson. That’s how you see it multitude Swedish coaches, who were asked by the sports publication Innebandymagazinet for their views on the matter.
Between 2000 and 2018, Kohonen played as many as 16 mostly excellent seasons in Sweden. For ten seasons, his employer was Storvreta from Uppsala, whom Kohonen has now twice coached to Swedish champion after his active career ended in 2019.
Jihde, who is less than a year older than Koho, was one of the Finn’s main opponents and evaluators both on Swedish league pitches and in national team tournaments for years. Jihde’s national team career ended as captain in the 2008 World Cup final in Prague, when Finland won 7-6 in overtime. Kohonen was the second passer of the deciding goal.
Jihde remembers congratulating Koho on Finland’s first World Championship gold with a warm hug, even though the situation took a turn for the worse.
It hasn’t even been thought about
Floorball is a sport originally a Swedish invention, and Sweden is won out of 14 10 of the shared world championships. Never before has a foreigner been considered as the head coach.
When Urheilu asks Jihde if a foreigner could even work as a head coach in an all-Swedish institution like the Swedish floorball team, his view is very clear.
– Sports-wise, Mika would be exactly what the Swedish national team volleyball team needs now. He was the best player in the world and now he is developing into the best coach in the world. He would be a competitive advantage for the national team.
Jihde reminds us that even if Kohonen’s choice would raise eyebrows in Sweden, it would not be due to his citizenship.
– He is in such a position in Swedish floorball that he is already considered Swedish. At the same time, the Swedish athletes have of course not forgotten what he did against us in the Finnish national team shirt.
A special arrangement
One question mark would be a special setup where Mika Kohonen would be the head coach of his own son in the national team, even the best young player in the sport Gabriel Kohosta.
– The starting point could be difficult in principle. But since Gabriel is such an all-around fantastic player, Mika wouldn’t have to worry about anyone accusing him of favoring his son. By the same logic, no one was sure to blame Kent Forsberg (Tre Kronor’s former head coach) his son Peter’s for favoring when Sweden won the ice hockey World Cup gold in 1998.
Niklas Jihde says that he considers it clear that Kohonen, who is respected both as a person and as an athlete in the Swedish sports milieu, would receive unreserved support and a long honeymoon from all sides – clubs, coaching colleagues, players, the media and the union.
– It is very interesting to see if Mika wants to move from club coaching to national team coaching at this point in his career. They are very different tasks.
Maverick or Iceman?
Niklas Jihde says that he has seen the Top Gun movies in which Tom Cruise i.e. Maverick and Val Kilmer i.e. Iceman bickers about who is the deadliest fighter ace on the planet. So what is his view of the player of all time: four-time world champion Kohonen or Jihde, who has won five World Championship golds, and who is currently involved in the sport, coaching his son’s junior team?
– Without taking a position on my own ranking on the list, I consider that Mika was a better player than me. However, I was better at getting publicity, Jihde laughs.