Tobias Linderoth’s overnight transfer to Everton in 2002 introduced the Swede to a ‘completely different way of doing things’.

Linderoth explains why his three years at Goodison Park enabled him to ultimately the reach the heights for which he was destined after the midfielder was born into a football-daft family.

This interview was originally published in the matchday programme for Everton's meeting with Manchester City this season.

The strongest relationships survive the greatest hardships.

Tobias Linderoth was infatuated with football from the day, as a six-year-old, he first accompanied dad Anders to work as manager of Swedish team Mjallby AIF.

The ordeal of being plagued by a debilitating hip injury and forced to prematurely retire at 31, though, put a strain on Linderoth’s connection with the sport he adored.

A senior footballer at 15, the boy who grew up idolising David Ginola considered walking away from the game altogether.

“I had a big operation in January [2008], six months after joining Galatasaray,” says Linderoth.

“I fought on for two years and had more surgery but had to stop.

“I’ve struggled with my hip since, I haven’t recovered, really. It was very difficult to come to terms with.

 

“Football had been my whole life. But I was experiencing pain every time I trained.

“Then you stop having fun, so you do not perform. I was quite fed up, actually, and thinking about doing something else.

“I wanted to be a policeman but it would have meant two years of studying. And I realised after a couple of months I could not continue without football.

“It is part of me. I love the game.”

Linderoth joined Everton unexpectedly and unheralded in January 2002.

His move from Norway caught the player off guard but not half as much as it stunned his girlfriend at the time.

“She was an air stewardess and on a stop in Thailand,” says Linderoth.

“When she came home, I had moved to England. That was how quickly it happened.”

 

Linderoth was briskly followed into Goodison Park by boyhood favourite Ginola, who signed from Aston Villa.

The young Swede never told his swashbuckling Gallic hero how he’d revered him, an omission reflective of the diffident personality Linderoth reckons stifled him at Everton.

“I was a bit shy, I wanted to be like David Ginola, to be like these players,” continues Linderoth.

“They were people I grew up watching and idolising and when you go into the same room as them it is quite intimidating.

“It was the same when I got in the national team.

“You have to prove yourself but you have big respect for those great footballers.”

Linderoth stops and sharply exhales. Makes an admission accompanied by undisguised frustration.

“Maybe I had a bit too much respect, sometimes.

“Yeah… in the Premier League I could have shown more of myself on the pitch earlier on.

“But my first six months with Everton was an important period in my career and taught me a lot.”

Linderoth’s football education began when he trailed dad to training and matches.

Anders Linderoth was a very good midfielder who played in all three of Sweden’s games at the 1978 World Cup.

He was with Marseille when Tobias was born in the French city.

 

A proud son, Tobias – still a Marseille fan and whose desire to play abroad was shaped by dad’s talk of spending the “best years of my life” in southern France – keenly points out Anders twice played for Swedish team Osters IF against Rinus Michels’ mesmeric Johan Cruyff-inspired Barcelona, too.

Anders switched to management after retiring but if there were advantages for Tobias in his freedom to move in exclusive circles, he had to contend with the tired trope about the boy getting his break because dad was in charge.

“I was in the dressing room and went away with him and the team [Mjallby AIF] when I was a kid,” says Linderoth.

“My dad never pressured me, he just told me if I wanted to make it, I must do extra work on my own.

“Until I was 18 or 19, every time I went on a football pitch, I had to prove myself.

“There was a lot of, ‘He’s not that good, it’s only because of his dad’.

“I played in Sweden’s national teams from a young age but then the question was, ‘Will he be as good as his dad?’

“When I played in the senior national team, I had proved I was a player as well.”

Linderoth, whose older sister Therese is completely immune to the charms of sport, recalls sticking a ball under his arm and heading off for solo drills after training with the youth teams at Mjallby and then IFK Hassleholm.

A right-winger back then and not the bustling midfielder Evertonians will remember – “I was quite quick and might occasionally beat a payer but was mainly a crosser and passer… I definitely wasn’t a David Ginola” – the schoolboy Linderoth’s enterprise paid off with a second division debut for Hassleholm at 15.

There was a chance, too, at that remarkably tender age, to face Tottenham Hotspur, in Sweden for pre-season.

“I was up against Sol Campbell,” says Linderoth.

“He was physical and powerful and I wasn’t especially big, so it was quite a battle.

“Physically and technically, the Tottenham players were of a different class.

“That motivated you to work harder because you wanted to reach that level in your career.

“I did not dominate any games at 15 but I survived.”

Campbell was in the Arsenal side when Linderoth made his first Everton start in February 2002.

The pair’s paths would cross again in Japan four months later when Campbell’s goal was cancelled out by Linderoth’s Everton colleague Niclas Alexandersson, as England drew with Sweden at the World Cup finals.

Sweden progressed to the last 16 and replicated that performance in Germany four years later.

In the intervening European Championship in Portugal – won by Greece – they lost a quarter-final to Holland on penalties.

Linderoth played for his country 76 times.

 

“It was a shame we could not take that final step,” says Linderoth.

“We had a good team for a few years.

“We lost to Senegal in 2002 [2-1 after extra time]. The tournament was open and we’d have played Turkey in the quarter-finals.

“We were on form and had Henrik Larsson, Freddie Ljungberg and Zlatan [Ibrahimovic] at his first finals.

“Against Holland in Euro 2004, we had some big chances to go through.”

Formidable striker Larsson was at Feyenoord when Linderoth signed a three-year contract with the Dutch club soon after turning 16 in summer 1995.

“I was quite homesick and probably too young to leave Sweden,” Linderoth reflects.

“I wanted to take the chance, it was a big club and very professional. But it was difficult to settle, I wasn’t ready.”

Linderoth was back in Sweden by Christmas and signed for Elfsborg where his dad was boss.

Elfsborg were duly promoted to the top-flight and missed European qualification the following season only on goal difference.

Linderoth would sample European football after moving to Norwegian club Stabaek in 1998.

He had to wait until 2006 – two years after joining Copenhagen from Everton – to play in the Champions League.

Linderoth’s Danish side overcame Ajax to reach the group stage, where they beat Manchester United and Celtic.

“Going to Copenhagen was a difficult decision, the Premier League is the best in the world with the top players,” says Linderoth.

“David Moyes did a great job with Everton and we had a good team.

“But I felt it was right to go to Copenhagen and had my best years there.

“We won the league twice and qualified for the Champions League for the first time.

“I was captain and it was time to take more responsibility on the pitch.

“I had changed, largely because of my experience with Everton.

“When David Moyes came, everything was so professional and every player did extra work.

“That is where I learned my trade and saw everything expected from a professional player, how to handle the pressure, how to live and look after your body and prepare yourself for games.”

Linderoth went to Stabaek in 1998, in part because his dad was manager but primarily with an eye on the bigger picture.

“A lot of European clubs – English clubs, especially – were looking to Norway,” says Linderoth.

“It was a Premier League-lite.

“The league was very physical, the ball more in the air than on the ground.

“I had to adapt and survive, work more in the gym so I could add my qualities to the team.”

 

Linderoth survived and thrived and after three “very happy” years shining in his new central midfield position his departure was inevitable.

As rumours over his future heightened, Linderoth instructed agent Roger Ljung – a left-back for Sweden’s 1994 World Cup semi-finalists – to update him only with concrete news.

“He called to say, ‘You have to get on a plane to England because tomorrow morning you are signing for Everton’,” says Linderoth.

“I didn’t have to think twice. It was a fantastic opportunity.”

Everton were not in great order on the field when Linderoth arrived and urgently needed a pick-me-up.

Linderoth, though, was coming from Norway’s pre-season and struggling to acclimatise.

Before long, the manager who recruited him, Walter Smith, was replaced by Moyes.

“The tempo was much higher and the players much better,” says Linderoth.

“I stayed in a hotel the first three months – I was with Ginola and [fellow new boy] Lee Carsley – and it was a lot to get used to.

 

“I had to find somewhere to live, get used to the English way of doing things.”

The English way of doing things?

“Everything was different: the food, the culture, how the Club operates. Driving on the wrong side of the road.

“For six months I was quite alone and you have to perform in that period.

“But I had Niclas [Alexandersson] and [Swedish winger] Jesper Blomqvist there.

“I spent a lot of time with Niclas’s family, they were really kind to me.

“The manager changing was difficult, to be honest. I knew it would take time to show David Moyes what I was about.”

Linderoth played eight games as Everton rallied under Moyes in late 2001/02, but a damaged hamstring ruined his first full campaign.

“I joined in January, then we had the World Cup,” says Linderoth.

“It was a long season and involved adjusting to the greater speed and physicality and intensity in England.

“I’d never had problems with my hamstring. It was very strange, but I think that year was too much for my body.”

 

Linderoth played only six times in 2002/03, including as a substitute when Wayne Rooney – “the best young footballer I’ve seen” – introduced himself to the world against Arsenal and starting the subsequent victories over West Ham United and Leeds United.

Profiting from a full pre-season in 2003, Linderoth was a relative fixture in what would be his final Goodison season.

“It was difficult being in and out the team but in that last season I consistently played,” says Linderoth.

“I got into it more and showed a little bit of myself. But still not the level I wanted.”

Copenhagen’s emphatic title success in 2006/07 prompted Linderoth to hunt down a new challenge.

Signing for Galatasaray qualifies as just that in anybody’s book.

Indeed, Linderoth confesses to some apprehension about moving to Istanbul – “and it would have been difficult to handle when I was young” – but wouldn’t have swapped his Turkish experience for the world.

The only downside was that cussed hip. He started okay but after pulling up lame in November 2007, played just 13 more times before his final game in January 2010.

“The fans were so passionate, every minute of every day,” says Linderoth.

“But they were very friendly people.

“It was an adventure for my family and completely different from anywhere else we’d been. I was so positively surprised by everything I encountered.

“We had a great time, except for the injury I suffered.”

 

Linderoth had “found some harmony in my soul” and abandoned thoughts of walking the beat when compatriot and former Portsmouth striker Mathias Svensson mooted the prospect of a coaching position with Elfsborg.

“I started and I am still here,” says Linderoth, now heading the top division club’s Under-19 and Under-21 teams after progressing from his original Under-17 post.

“I love coaching and love football, so it is the perfect job.

“I saw what my dad went through with good and bad results, so I knew what to expect coming into this world.

“I am happy in this job and will do my best, then see how far it takes me, same as when I played.

“Maybe in the future I can go further.”

Tobias Linderoth’s faithful relationship with football evidently has plenty of miles left in it yet.