Janne Andersson remembers a training camp with Halmstad in the 2000s and in particular one day when the coaching staff and players had an evening off together.
The players had decided they were going to play charades. Andersson, as assistant coach, was second up and he picks up the story: “I walk up on to the stage and get given a little note that says ‘a dancing monkey’. I get straight into it, very energetically. I do a dance. I scratch my armpits. I peel and eat a banana.
“At this point I look up at the players, who are sitting there completely nonplussed and just stare at me. I carry on for a bit but after a while I start to get angry and shout at them that it is obvious what I am. I then get told off for talking. I am now really annoyed but carry on for another 30 seconds before one of the forwards, Henrik Bertilsson, puts his hand up and says ‘Are you a donkey?’
“I now have a complete breakdown and start yelling at him and the other players, telling them how thick they are, and walk off stage. I sit down next to one of the members of the coaching staff who just looks at me and says: ‘Don’t you get it? You’ve been set up.’”
Andersson, the Sweden coach who is preparing his side to face England in the World Cup quarter-finals on Saturday, told the story when he appeared on Sommar, a Swedish radio programme in which inspirational people talk about their experiences and beliefs. The anecdote is revealing. Anderson is competitive, yet able to laugh at himself. Above all, though, there is one thing that is so important to him that it transcends everything else: respect.
Andersson brought up the story about the monkey/donkey because, he said, it did not matter that he had been made to look a fool in front of his whole squad because it was done with kärlek, affection, and that there was a deep lying respect between him and his players. And “respect” underpins everything Andersson does. It is so key to his coaching philosophy that he would not be able to function if it did not exist between him and his players.
Andersson took over as Sweden coach after Euro 2016, when a Zlatan Ibrahimovic-led team went out in the group stage. Since then he has overseen a small revolution, making Sweden one of the hardest teams in Europe to beat.
On their way to Russia they beat France at home and finished above the Netherlands. In the play-offs they saw off Italy. At the tournament itself they won Group F ahead of Germany and Mexico before dispatching Switzerland, ranked No 6 in the world, in the last 16.
So how has he done it? “From the moment Janne came in our directions have been very, very clear,” the captain, Andreas Granqvist, says. “We all agreed on the important principles and how we should act, on and off the pitch, that the team is more important than anything else. And you can see that on the pitch, every single one of us works incredibly hard out there, offensively and defensively. That hard work is the symbol of this national team.”
Granqvist is not a bad symbol for the team, either. He has had a far from stellar club career, with spells at Wigan, Groningen, Genoa and Krasnodar, but has played like a world-class defender for the national team. There are other examples, such as Sebastian Larsson, relegated with Sunderland in 2017 and playing for Hull City last season, but outstanding in central midfield in the two play-off games against Italy.
Andersson, of course, is key to all this. Incredibly engaged on the touchline – he admitted earlier this tournament that he looks like “a monster” at times – his energy and beliefs permeate the squad. He asks a lot from his players and sets high standards – but he also gets a lot in return.
He is 55 years old now and has had a distinguished coaching career in Sweden, starting as player-coach for local side Alets IK before joining Halmstad as assistant coach for the first time in the 1990s. He was then in charge of Laholm, Halmstad, Örgryte and finally, IFK Norrköping, whom he led to the Swedish title in 2015. They had not won the Swedish top flight for 26 years.
A year later he accepted the job as Sweden coach and remembers how he was a little bit nervous about how the squad would react when he told them that he was leaving. Would they think that he was jumping ship? Would they be angry?
In the end the squad broke out in huge applause for the coach. They were delighted for him. Two years on he has become a cult hero.
After Sweden had beaten Italy in the play-offs a photo of Andersson tidying up the dressing room went viral (very similar to the videos of Japanese fans in Russia). His desire to behave well at all times stems from, among other things, the kit man at his first club, Alets IK. Carl-Axel Jacobsson had the motto “man gör rätt för sig”, which roughly translates as “do the right thing”. “At this club we do the right thing, when we win and when we lose,” Jacobsson used to say. “And no one will be able to come and say we did not behave in the right way,”
In his Sommar programme Andersson talks about how Jacobsson died suddenly aged 59 and his regrets at not being able to attend the funeral. But Jacobsson’s spirit lives on in Andersson’s national team.
“I can’t stand laxness,” says Andersson. “I don’t know how many times I’ve told players to pick up the tape they use for their shinpads from the floor. They take off their shinpads, take off the tape and put it on the floor. To hell with that! Pick that tape up and put it in the bin.
“All people gain from order and that is why it is important for us to have a concept of how to behave towards each other as well as other people off the pitch.”
He continued: “We represent something that is bigger than any individual. Why should the cleaner tidy up the things just because we can’t be bothered to pick them up ourselves? What right does anyone have to spit out snus [snuff] in the sink so that someone else has to pick it up? People may think I am manic when I go around picking up things but being dignified and kind is something no person should get too big for.”
Andersson’s values may be considered old-fashioned but they feel refreshing nevertheless. By asking his players to adhere to some basic principles he has taken Sweden to the last eight of the World Cup. The question now is whether it is enough to go even further.
