Talangjakt för Chelsea?

(tid publicerad på Chelsea Vital).

This weekend Allsvenskan starts, the 20+ something worst league in Europe if you believe UEFA rankings.

Still, Sweden gets to the big tournaments while England have to stay home, so stop smirking. Plus we either draw or beat England, never get beaten by them, and we still have the Avram Grant of national football as manager.

Sweden will be the place to look for talent this year. Allsvenskan will offer up more talented players that soon will become professionals in Holland than in a very long time. Plus it is the venue for the U-21 European Championship. So a lot of Chelsea players and some prospective Chelsea players will sure ply their trade in Sweden this summer.

Last year`s champions, which incidentally comes from the city I now live in and which I played for as junior, Kalmar FF are not favourites to win this year. They have lost their two best goal scorers, 34 goals in a 30 game league. It is a red team so of course I do not support it, despite playing for them. My team is Djurgården that will not win this year either but I believe they will do much better than most experts do. They have a young talented team and an interesting manager team.

But, in Sweden we have to live with the fact that if a player is good or even just promising to be good - he will be bought up (cheaply) by a bigger league and usually mid season as we play Spring-Autumn. So if a team is terrific until July, it can be without their best players in August. Boring but a fact of life for small leagues.

Chelsea have never been very interested in Swedish players though a great Swedish promise, the 16 year Marko Mitrovic now is playing at Cobham. I think he might become something, but I have seen so many Swedish promising players become youth pros and never amount to anything as adults. Bojan Djordic at Man U to take a British/Swedish example. I strongly believe that the ones that become best, develop best at their home clubs up until 19-21 or so of age, but the new rules, like the idiotic 6/5 rule forces the big clubs to trawl the youth market and more and more kids will end up and get chewed up in the big club`s academies with no regard to where or how they will develop the best.

Mitrovic comes from Malmö FF, the club that developed Zlatan Ibrahimovic. They now claim to have the best prospect since Ibrahimovic in 16-year old Alex Nilsson. Nilsson (forward) made his first team debut last season under coach Roland Nilsson (Coventry, Sheffield W fame). Chelsea are just one club that has tried to sign him.

In nearby Helsingborg Rasmus Jönsson, 19, is the kid to watch. He plays beside the best Swedish player in modern time, Henrik Larsson (37 and still the best in Sweden) and is tipped to be the new sensation this year. Though next to Larsson just about anyone looks sensational. Even Quaresma (sorry, low blow but I could not resist it!).

Still I have to say, if Frank Arnesen and his cohorts have not been seriously looking at 17-year old Robin Söder in IFK Gothenburg and preferably made an offer already - then Arnesen must be fired immediately! Söder is totally amazing and he is only 17. He is also smart enough to stay with his club instead of get lured away to the big clubs on the continent to dwell in their youth academies. Söder is one of those natural goal scorers that score in just about any way you can imagine, without really understanding how. If he develops even close to his promise he will become, very different, but greater than Ibrahimovic in five years time. He made a sensational debut last summer and only an injury stopped him from becoming a household name in the European footballing community already. Despite numerous offers he signed a new contract with Gothenburg (Göteborg).

Anel Raskaj, 19, at Halmstad is also on the short list of becoming a huge talent soon to be wasted in a mid-European club, midfielder.

My team Djurgården have not been too successful the last couple of years in developing talent, but we now have a big strong midfielder that Arsenal several times have tried to pry away for their academy, Philip Hellquist. He also made his debut last year and has gained some necessary muscle before this season. I think he will play a fair number of games. He scored two goals in the last training game before the season.

Another young player that already made his international debut is Kalmar`s Rasmus Elm. He is the youngest in a triplet of Elm brothers. His older brother Viktor became professional in Heerenveen after last season and has been very successful. The oldest brother is a decent power forward but it is the youngest brother that is the major prospect in the family. Everyone expects him to end up in Holland, as is the usual stepping stone for most Swedish talent, in the summer or at talent-developers Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga, which studies him intensely. Offensive midfielder with Delap-long throw-ins and very good free kicks.

There is also a couple of young (all players mentioned here as prospects are 20 or younger) goalkeepers that can become very good. Kristoffer Nordfeldt at BP is only 19 and tipped to be the choice for the Sweden team in the U-21 Euros. Viktor Noring 18 is chased by the spuds. My team has some 21-year olds that we hope will take that last step from talent to the finished product, Youssef and Rajalakso. The tipped champs Elfsborg have one in Emir Bajrami that looks promising (midfield) with Danni Avdic (20, forward) being maybe even more interesting this year.

Gothenburg have another 17 year old, Nicklas Bärkroth, midfielder that looks interesting.

There are also some young talent from other countries, like 19 year old Yakubu Alfa, the star from Nigeria`s U-20.

Talent wise I must say Sweden has not had a generation like these 16-23 year olds since the 50`s, at least. But as so many of our Chelsea kids have shown, there is a huge step from being a talent to become a first team stringer in a club such as Chelsea. That is why they are usually better off staying in smaller clubs. An impossibility in the new "slave-society of footballers" Blatter and his cronies want to create with their 6/5 rule. They are forcing the big clubs to sign up all talent before they turn 18, so they can play as home-grown in future.

Chelsea have cut down drastically on scouts so hopefully Arnesen will read this and take a look up north, not only for the Euro U-20 that will be played in four cities and at two brand new arenas (Gothenburg and Malmö). It could actually be worth it. Young Swedish footballers are almost as cheap as African, and a lot cheaper than South Americans not to mention British ones. After all the very most expensive ever did not cost more than 7 million pounds and he is now valued at 80m. They also have a great reputation for working hard, understanding English (everyone does), tactically very astute and being very loyal to managerial ideas.

(Footnote; a former Chelsea prospect Albin Ekdahl 19 signed for Juventus last Summer and has already played some Serie A-games…Did we miss out there?!)