PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Tomas Brolin is one of Swedish football’s greatest heroes.
And he has played against some of the world’s best players of all time.
Now the Swede points out who was the toughest to face on the football pitch.
Only 28 years old was forced Thomas Brolin make the tough decision to end your football career for good. But before that he had time to experience so much on grass courts around the world.
Brolin’s career
The biggest was of course the impressive WC bronze with Sweden in 1994 and Brolin was deservedly selected for the world team for his impressive performance in the tournament. “Näsviken’s Maradona” also won the UEFA Cup, the Cup Winners’ Cup and was awarded the Golden Ball twice, as Sweden’s best footballer.
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He made a breakthrough at GIF Sundsvall and IFK Norrköping before the move went out into the world and to Italy. It was at Parma that Brolin’s career flourished and where he played at his very best.
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Against Maradona
During his time in Italy, Brolin faced some of the world’s best players of all time. As Serie A was considered the very best league during the early 90s.
– Yes, there were an incredible number of good players in the league. Although I didn’t think much of it at the time either. It is clear that Milan and Juventus were always tough to face. Milan won the most during my years in Italy and had players like Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten. Roberto Mancini and Gianluca Vialli in Sampdoria were also fantastic players, Tomas Brolin tells SportExpressen.
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Then there was also a certain one Diego Maradona at that time. Tomas Brolin met the big star already in his third game in the first season in Serie A, when Parma managed to defeat a favorite tipped Napoli 1-0.
READ MORE: Tomas Brolin singles out the best Swedish player of all time – with an important reminder: “You mustn’t forget it”
“Be the toughest”
But it is still not great legends like Maradona, Baresi, Maldini or van Basten that the Swede selects when he has to appoint the toughest opponent from his career. Instead, it will be the tougher defender Jürgen Kohler, who played for Juventus at the time.
– He was the toughest, he could cut you off at the knees. Against him, it was a matter of thinking a little faster and jumping a little higher. He was tough, a player from the old guard, but also a good football player, says Brolin to the evening newspaper.
When it comes to the toughest audience he’s faced, it becomes an obvious choice for Brolin.
– It was in Naples. It was always special to face Napoli. There you didn’t go out into the streets when you were an away team, there you just stayed in a hotel that was out of the way, then it was a bus and quickly into the arena. The audience threw coins and stuff and it was probably only where I was involved in it in Italy, he says in the interview.
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