Intervju med Ben Rosen
Intervjun är gjord på engelska och genomfördes 19 december. Svaren är redovisade på engelska för att få fram nyanserna i vad Ben menar och säger. Ben fortkortas kort och gott med B och Kalle med K. Frågorna är fetstilade. Håll till godo!
K - Hi Ben!
What´s up?
B - Good.
K - Winning allsvenskan then go to the World Cup. First of all, congratulations.
Can you describe the feeling?
B - Winning allsvenskan was great at the time we celebrated the gold against Häcken, you know it´s been so long. It feels liked we celebrated it so much after Norrköping so that feeling of that went away. But I think like winning the league and doing it in the way we did, playing so well and I think we were so dominant this year.
That was a brilliant feeling to sort of get back to that because it´s really been, it really hasn’t been since my first year in 2014 where I thought we were so dominant, to go and win the league. I think that the previous year it was very up and down, close to the end of the season, it was really uncertain whether we would do it or not.
So that was a really nice feeling but I think going to the world cup is like, it´s the same feeling I got when we went to Champions League the first time. It´s something that, when you start working in football there´s a few things that you can have experienced that very few people get to experience. Champions League, international tournament and the European championship and the world cup. They are the three things that very few people get to experience and I think getting to tick of that second thing, having the opportunity to work at a world cup is amazing. Really amazing feeling.
K -How big part (if any) is Åge for the success of your carrer?
B - Yeah, I think that the biggest thing that Åge gave me was that he gave me an opportunity to come in here; I mean I was 23 years old when they brought me on to the club. And I think for Åge to put his trust in me at that age and give me that opportunity to, when they really didn’t know that much about me.
At that point I´ve been sort of leading the fitness/strength condition side of things at Southampton for about a year.
I had been working in Southampton for about four years at that point. But Åge, the trust he put in me and that he gave a sort of platform to be able to do what I needed to do and I think that opportunity has given me a massive, that´s been a massive part of my development and my progress. And obviously the things that we have been able to do when we are working in the same team have been brilliant so far.
K - You were an acquaintance of John Philips? So that´s why you got in contact with MFF?
B -Exactly.
K - On TV and from the stands it looks like you celebrate the most. Would you agree?
B - *laughter* I think that for me football has always been something that brings out all my emotions, so I would say that in my personal life I’m not a very emotional person and I would say football gives me that chance to sort of express myself emotionally. I think that we work so hard every single day and the beautiful thing about working in football is that at the end of each week you´ve got a goal and it´s either you´ve succeeded or you haven’t succeeded and to put all that work in every single day and to go and succeed at the end of week.
I think, it´s an emotional release and it´s just a joy and a happiness that just comes out. Obviously at the end of the year when you go and win a title then that´s sort of an acumination of everything. It gets pushed even more forward when its important goals and important times in the games and all that kind of stuff. But I have been and I was a West Ham season ticket holder since the age of about five until I was 18. Home and away every single game. I’m a football fan, I love football, so football is just something for me that is a opportunity to express that.
K - So you would say it´s a release after every season?
B - I´d say so .
K - How would you describe Malmö FF as a club?
B - I´d say that Malmö FF is in a very similar place now to where Southampton was when I first joined them. When I first joined Southampton they were in league one. They had just come out of administration and when I joined them the staff had just started get payed again. They went 3-4 months without getting any money and there was a real sort of community feel to the club. Everyone that went to the games lived in Southampton. The town, it was a real football town and I think
Malmö FF is in a very similar place right now in that it´s such a community club and you know everyone. You know everyone in the offices upstairs and I think that´s where football should be. If you look at clubs now around Europe it´s moving away from that model and that family model and the community model to more of a global model.
I´d say that it´s only obviously financially Malmö lose things compare to other European clubs but I don’t think they lose, they don’t lose that community and family feel that you have in this club and it´s something very different to what you get in the rest of Europe. Everyone In the city love the team and I’d say that´s the biggest thing just the family and the community side of things that I really enjoy.
K - So Southampton has a lot of old players in the organization as well?
B- They did, not anymore but when I first joined it was like that. It really was. You would be at training and Matt Le Tissier would just pop down to training and watch. You got Bellani watch the training and all this kinda stuff would be going and it was a good place to be. It was a happy place. No one was looking over their shoulder worried about: “Okey who´s gonna stab me in the back”, “Who´s trying to get my job, “Who´s trying to push himself up the ladder in front of me” and all this kind of stuff and I think that´s what you have in Malmö FF aswell.
K - Like Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain?
They were, Walcott had just left about a year before I joined and Ox was still there playing, they had Adam Lalana playing, Luke Shaw came through when I was there, Calum Chambers. That sort of environment was a good place to work and I feel that Malmö FF is a similar place to work at the moment.
K - MFF is really good when it comes to develop players. Do you feel the same can be said for coaches?
B - I would say that if you look at the staff that we have at the moment it´s all ex players a part from Magnus (Pehrsson). Jens (Fjällström) played for the club, Olof (Persson) played for the club, Jonnie (Fedel) played for the club. Greger (Andrjievski) played for the club as well. I would say that what they, they want people to know the club. Rather than trying to look at “how develop these people” I would say that they want people that know the club and understand the club. I would say it´s a different thing the way they develop players.
I think that for them, the way Malmö FF develop players is more of a, that´s something that obviously the club is proud of and they have to keep developing and then I would say that Malmö is so lucky with players that been. If you take a club like Göteborg of something like that you´ve got 2-3 clubs in the same area. You take Stockholm clubs, you´ve got 2-3 clubs in the area. Malmö FF, everyone who lives in Skåne wants to play for Malmö, all the young kids.
Where i´d say it is different with coaches but the club they want people to know the club and I would say that I´m starting to get in to a situation where I feel like I´m a Malmö person and I’m starting to know the club and I want to stay here and develop and watch the club sort of develop with me.
K - Did you know anything of Swedish football before you got here?
B - No.
K - Nothing?
B - No * laughter *
K - Not a name? Nothing?
B - I honestly didn’t. When I had Malmö presented to me, the only thing I knew about them was that John (Philips) had worked here. And then I would say that him and I spoke on the phone for an hour about the club and that hour conversation really sold it to me. He said some really great thing about the club. I would say that´s, and obviously at that point I started to research and look at the city and look at the club. The only thing I knew about Malmö FF was the cup final games again Nottingham Forest and obviously about Zlatan.
I would say that in England that was all that was really recognized but I’d say that now if you take all that we have achieved the last four years and the fact the we have now really started to dominate Swedish football in terms of the amount of times we have won the league in this decade and the fact that we played Champions League two years in a row, that the name of the club started to broaden. I would say that people in the UK know a lot more of Malmö FF then I did when I first came to the club. So the name of the club is certainly getting bigger but I knew very little about Swedish football.
K - What´s your next challenge?
B - My next big challenge is that I want to, I really want to develop something in Malmö FF where we are seen as in my area of sports science and fitness. That we become the leaders in Scandinavia football. That we become the best department in Scandinavian football. From top to bottom, from the first team all the way down to the under 9s and under 10s.
Besides that, my next big challenge is that how do we develop that and we are starting to put things in place. We are starting to say that right within 3-4 years, how are we going get to this point? So I would say that´s the next big challenge for me.
K - What´s your goal for next season?
B- I would say that the teams’ goal for the next season is that we have spoken about already with Magnus. We want to win the league, we want to win the cup, and we want to qualify for Champions League. I´m not going say anything less than that is a failure but that´s now we have to progress every year and I would say that last year we didn’t have the opportunity in the cup and obviously we failed in Europe but we won the league.
Next year we have to win the league and we have to win the cup, and we have to go forward in Europe. It is as simple as that. I don’t really say that I have, there´s no individual goals for me, it´s not that I say I want players to do this, this and this physically we want to develop them and my job is to just help us win games and by winning games then the team achieve their goals. It is as simple as that.
K - A machine basically?
B - Exactly.
Extra frågor
K - What do you miss the most about England food and drinkwise?
B - Good tea.
K - Desribce the city of Malmö
B - I would say it´s a, it goes back how I described to club I think. It´s a community city, it really is. It´s a lively city, it´s a fun city to be in and I think that like we. My friends a lot of the time when they come here we go to Copenhagen and we talk about it. The comparison between Malmö and Copenhagen and we say that if you want to go somewhere for a weekend then you´ll go to Copenhagen but if you want to live somewhere you live in Malmö because it´s just a calm place to live, you have everything here that you need. I just like the city. I really like the city. It´s just a calm and enjoyable place to be. It has that community and family feel that you want in a place.
K - What player whines the most about your training?
B -Behrang Safari. Easy.
K - He seems like he has the weakest calves of a 80 year old man?
*laughter*
K - Every time he falls it´s like, you kind of worry.
B -Yeah, no, he´s an interesting guy but he´s definitely the guy moans the most about everything.
Before it was Kari, when I first came it was Magnus Eriksson a 100 %. Magnus and me would fight every single day. It was like a real old married couple, it was a real love hate relationship but we argued every single day.
That moved on and it was Kari Arnason, he moaned about everything but again it was like an old married couple, like we loved each other but hated each other at the same time and now Behrang has taken over. But Behrang is more like the joker in the team and you always have someone that is going to play games with you. But we really don’t have like sort of, like who is the terrorist of the team? We don’t have any of those. We don’t have any bad players in the team. But Behrang is the one that likes to moan the most.
All three had an opinion about everything.
K- Favorite Swedish word
B - I don’t know what my favorite Swedish word is *laughter*
It´s not really a Swedish word but when I first came here I´ll be talking to people and while I was talking to someone, they would do this Swedish thing where they take a breath in and I though there was something wrong with people. I didn’t know if it was something wrong with their lungs or whatever or their breathing mechanics. So I took me a while to work out that is was a sort of Swedish way to agree with you, saying yeah. I wouldn’t say that´s my favorite word but that was the first thing I noticed anyway.
K - I think that´s more of a northern Swedish thing, like Forsberg.
B - Yeah, I think that´s why I noticed because it wasn’t many people who did it.
*Example*
B - The few people who did it, what´s wrong with them.
K - Eric Larsson, he´s from Gävle so he´s going to use that.
B - I´m sure he will. I´ll tell him that as well.
