Europe’s top soccer official announces plans to retire
Europe’s top soccer official, Lennart Johansson, will retire when his term as UEFA president expires next year, the 76-year-old Swede told Kathimerini’s weekly Kappa magazine in its latest edition last weekend. Over the years, Johansson, who has held UEFA’s top spot for 16 years, has established a reputation as a tough and demanding perfectionist with capable diplomatic skills. Throughout his career, Johansson has championed meritocracy and justice. In Sweden, they say he adores two things, soccer and children. In rare interviews given over recent years, Johansson has not refrained from supporting unconventional views. Moreover, the Swede has not hesitated to condemn individuals who treat soccer as nothing more than a business venture. Excerpts of the interview, conducted at his UEFA office in Switzerland for Kappa, follow. How did you first get involved with soccer? I was born in 1929 and grew up during World War II. Sweden was a very isolated country. For us kids there was just skiing, ice-skating, and soccer in the summer. For me there was nothing but soccer. Although I liked the game a lot, I was never a good player. How did you get involved with the sport’s administrative side? Because of my poor career in soccer, I became president of a small club in Sweden. Then, I was asked to go and work for a bigger club. Because I knew about dressing rooms and soccer, I soon became president. That led to me becoming president of the league, then president of the Swedish soccer federation, and after five years, I was elected UEFA’s president (April, 1990). In a decade and a half, you’ve managed to change the form and structure of European soccer’s federation as well as European soccer itself. Your ideas about restructuring the UEFA Cup and creating the Champions League proved revolutionary, but, most importantly, produced results. What’s your recipe for success, Mr President? If there’s a recipe, as you say, then it must have had lots of ingredients. What are they, then? Conciliation, the ability to negotiate, be democratic – you see, I come from a country where this is imperative – maintaining a family climate, a low profile, to not have a large opinion of yourself, lots of ideas, good associates, and a bit of luck. Then, maybe a bit of humor. Had you realized you held UEFA’s top post for 16 years. I couldn’t even imagine that I’d become president of Stockholm. I still feel surprised about certain appointments… Time goes by, and it’s time I stepped down and let someone else assume my responsibilities. It’s time for me to go fishing. Do you have somebody specific in mind? I can say that I see lots of individuals with knowledge and ability but I don’t want to support anybody specific. In an older interview for a Swiss newspaper, you remarked that the game of «soccer rates above all else [commercial interests, etc]…» Soccer is a sport open to all and it moves young people because it’s exciting. It’s a sport that remains unpredictable. You can cry or feel bliss These are the elements that make it such a great game and I’m very gratified that I, too, played a role in supporting its success in Europe. There are also bad sides to soccer – hooliganism, racism, doping, rigged games, bribery, illegal betting, just to name a few. What is UEFA’s position on recent cases of racism, which I know ranks highly on your agenda? Without a doubt, racism is one of the repulsive forms of disrespect for other human beings. It has no place in our societies and even less in team sports like soccer, where all team members are equally important in the bid to attain an objective, a result. UEFA has decided to do all it can within its capabilities to rid soccer of this shame. We’re uniting our efforts with those of organizations such as FARE, the EU, and the EU Commission, as well as other agencies to bolster our efforts against racism. We’ve organized a conference for February in Spain. Thirty years after the first events [by English and German skinhead-hooligans of the period], we have the opportunity to assess the measures we’ve taken, exchange views and ideas, and think about future action. Differentiation, racial and otherwise, has no place in soccer and we’ve got to keep it out. This article first appeared in Kathimerini’s color supplement K on January 8.
