-An early summer evening in Stockholm. An eight-year-old boy is wandering home from a friend’s house when he passes a man on the street next to the park in which there is a football pitch. He takes a few more strides, realises who the man is, then runs back to ask him if he wouldn’t mind kicking the ball around for a while.
“Sorry, I’m just on my way home to watch the Champions League final,” John Guidetti says. “But if you’re still awake after the match, we can play then.”
The pair go their separate ways to watch Ivan Rakitic, Luis Suárez and Neymar score as Barcelona beat Juventus. But the boy has taken Guidetti’s words as a promise. He is so tired he has to stand up during the second half in order to stay awake, while his parents fret about his forthcoming disappointment.
The referee blows his whistle as 11.30pm and the boy immediately rushes out of the house and over to the football pitch … where Guidetti is waiting. And while Barça fans go mad on the Ramblas, the Sweden striker, a star-struck eight-year-old and some other friends have a kickabout at the park. When Guidetti was asked about the that night, he just said: “It costs so little and gives so much.”
Stories like that mean it’s not hard to see why Sweden fans love Guidetti. At the European Under-21 Championship he has been their talisman and chief cheerleader – if the ball goes out for a corner and the volume drops, there’s one man you can put your money on wheeling his arms around and cajoling the fans (of which there have been plenty here in the Czech Republic) – into action. And plenty of young defenders at this tournament have been discomfited by his battering-ram style.
When he burst on to the scene as a 19-year-old with 20 goals in 23 Eredivisie games for Feyenoord it seemed only a matter of time before he was a first team regular at Manchester City. But his club career since simply hasn’t gone according to plan. Neither Stoke City fans nor Celtic supporters will remember him with much fondness and will be without a club later this week. But he clearly relishes wearing the yellow national shirt.
Source: The Guardian
//Youngtime//
Source: The Guardian
//Youngtime//
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