LONG READ

Niclas Alexandersson: 'I Have Only Good Things To Say About Everton'

Niclas Alexandersson won multiple trophies in Sweden, gave Paolo Maldini a torrid Champions League night, and scored one of his country's most famous goals.

In an exclusive interview, first published in Everton's matchday programme for December's meeting with Chelsea, the Swede talks through a stellar career – and admits his only regret stems from a 'down period' at Goodison Park.


Niclas Alexandersson closes himself into the quiet of a classroom, the shrill of a bustling corridor fading as he fastens shut a leaden door.

Alexandersson is taking a breather in his day coaching football at Gothenburg’s Anglagardsskolan – a sport-centric school with ties to the Swedish city’s illustrious football club.

The background hubbub disappears altogether.

Alexandersson is contemplating whether he’d caution his students against any course of action he took in 20 years playing professionally.

“I can’t say there are too many things I regret,” says Alexandersson, interrupting a long, heavy silence.

“But, in some situations, I should have been more forward, more confident. That comes down to personality.

“I wouldn’t say to be like Zlatan.

“But sometimes when you go into a room, you need to find your place.

“I could have done that a bit more.

“I advise young players to be brave.”

Alexandersson spent three-and-a-half years with Everton after joining from Sheffield Wednesday in summer 2000.

He homes in on the second half of his Goodison Park career as the period when he could have been more forceful.


“I didn’t play my best football for different reasons,” says Alexandersson.

“Looking back, I am… not sad… I wish I could have shown Evertonians my best.

“The first two seasons were okay, the final 18 months were poor.

“It was mainly in my head. I didn’t show the ability I knew I had.”

Injuries stripped Alexandersson of any rhythm in his first Everton campaign.

He featured in the Blues’ opening 23 games the following term, though, and after David Moyes replaced Walter Smith late in the season scored in his first two games under the new manager.

That summer Alexandersson struck his “most memorable goal”, earning Sweden a 1-1 draw with England at the 2002 World Cup.

Alexandersson identifies the mental fog which descended following his country’s second-round exit from those Far Eastern finals as the “turning point” in his Everton career.

“We were unbeaten against England, Argentina and Nigeria in our group but lost on a golden goal to Senegal,” says Alexandersson.

“We’d have played Turkey in the quarter-finals… it was a huge disappointment.

“I had a short holiday before reporting back to Everton.

“It was David Moyes’ first pre-season. I was mentally tired and not at my best.


“I improved as the season approached but was on the bench for our first league game, which I didn’t expect. I played in a few away matches where we weren’t good.

“I started to overthink and gradually lost confidence, so when I got my chances I didn’t play well.

“I wasn’t the player I had been and could understand why I wasn’t playing in the end.”

Alexandersson initially came to the attention of Smith – the manager who brought him to Everton – as a gifted winger in the bustling IFK Gothenburg team which gave Rangers a whacking in the 1997/98 Champions League qualifying rounds.

Paul Gascoigne was playing for Smith’s Scots and unleashed his frustration by downing Alexandersson with what The Herald newspaper called a “reckless challenge”.

By way of apology Gascoigne gifted his match shirt to the wounded party.

“Yeah, I’ve still got it,” says Alexandersson.

“I was more than happy with that deal. We beat a top Rangers team and when Everton came for me it meant a lot the manager had like me since that game.”

Alexandersson comes from rich footballing stock.

Dad Lennart played for top division Halmstads, where Niclas spent eight years after joining from village team Vessigebro BK aged 16.

Niclas’s brother Daniel won a domestic title with Elfsborg and the pair were in the same Gothenburg team at the back ends of their careers.

“We were really looking forward to it,” begins Alexandersson,” but Daniel’s spell at IFK didn’t turn out as he hoped and I enjoyed it more than he did.”

Lennart quit football aged 26 to work in the family business.

AB G Alexandersson was established by Niclas’s grandfather Gustav in 1961. In 2013 Lennart passed control of the company, which makes its cash selling agricultural products, to Daniel and the third Alexandersson brother Marcus, whose own sporting ambitions were rocked in the late-1980s.


“Marcus was hit by a drunk driver when he was 14 or 15,” says Alexandersson.

“He fully recovered but couldn’t play sport for a couple of years.

“He was different from me and Daniel, stronger and more physical. He was good at judo and didn’t have the same interest in football.”

Alexandersson’s son Noah, born 18 years ago in Warrington, is following his dad’s line of work.

A graduate of Anglagardsskolan, Noah has made a handful of appearances for IFK and represented Sweden at multiple age-group levels.

Watching his boy prompts a flutter in Alexandersson’s stomach more pronounced than anything he felt when playing.

“Yeaaahhh,” he winces, as if simply picturing Noah in action sets those butterflies’ wings flapping.

“I am just so keen for him to do well.

“I can help with a few tactical things. But what you eat, how you sleep, the extra training you do, you have to discover for yourself.”

Niclas is a lone wolf in the Alexandersson pack in that he lives away from hometown Falkenberg.

When he travelled 64 miles down the west coast to join grandmother Gertrud’s 95th-birthday celebrations on the eve of this interview, he was returning to a place stocked with memories.

Growing up, Alexandersson played and watched every sport going. Those that weren’t, too, Niclas and his friends routinely building makeshift high jump bars for impromptu competitions.

He would ski during snowy winters. Indeed, explaining his favourite sport besides football today and anticipating a nonplussed response, Alexandersson gets his retaliation in first.


“You probably don’t know what cross-country skiing is,” he laughs. “But there is a British guy called Andrew Musgrave who is very good.”

Rudimentary research reveals Musgrave to be a three-times Olympian.

Alexandersson chuckles at his own Olympic memories.

Two months after playing in the 1992 Under-21 European Championship final with Sweden he was part of a wide-eyed squad at the Barcelona Games.

“We were in the Olympic Village, living next to people like [prodigious Jamaican sprinter] Merlene Ottey,” says Alexandersson.

“I was awestruck walking round. There was so much going on and it affected the football.”

Alexandersson was relegated and promoted with Halmstads.

He won the Swedish Cup in 1995 and in the following season’s European Cup Winners’ Cup his team frightened the life out of crack Serie A outfit Parma.

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00:38

EVERTON WOMEN RETURN TO TRAINING IN hummel GEAR

Revamped squad dons hummel kit at USM Finch Farm.


Alexandersson counts the tie as a “good memory” despite Halmstads’ 3-0 first-leg advantage slipping down the plughole in Italy.

Mention the iconic names from that Parma side – Zola, Stoichkov, Cannavaro, Brolin – and Alexandersson shoots back with that of Halmstads’ teammate Freddie Ljungberg.

“Twice in my career,” starts Alexandersson, “I’ve seen youngsters emerging who you could tell had something extra.

“Wayne Rooney was one – the other was Freddie Ljungberg.”

Alexandersson moved from Falkenberg for the first time in 1996 and his decision to plump for progressive Gothenburg over offers from Switzerland proved very shrewd.

He won a league title, had a regular diet of Champions League football and on one magical night in that competition against AC Milan realised he belonged in elite company.

“I went past Paolo Maldini and put in the cross for our equaliser,” says Alexandersson.

“Then towards the end I scored the winning goal.

“Maldini is one of best left-backs there’s been. Do it against him and you believe you can do it against anyone.”

Alexandersson’s two seasons with Gothenburg doubled up as a finishing school for the Premier League.

He admits he’d have been ill-prepared for English football on leaving Halmstads but after swapping Sweden for Sheffield Wednesday in December 1997 started like an express train at Hillsborough.

Alexandersson lost none of his opening six games. In the seventh he damaged his cruciate ligament.

“It was the worst injury of my career,” says Alexandersson. “I was out for nine months but I’ve never had another problem with my knee.

“Wednesday was a great club for me… Udinese were interested but it can be harder for Scandinavians to settle in southern Europe.”

Alexandersson’s wife Frida joined him in Yorkshire when Niclas returned to England after rehabilitating in his homeland.


Shortly after his comeback he scored twice in a 3-1 win over the Manchester United side which would end the 1998/99 season wheeling three trophies around town.

If that game forms Alexandersson’s standout Hillsborough memory, then the wider public will more readily recall his first match following injury in September 1998.

Paolo Di Canio’s shove sent referee Paul Alcock tumbling as Wednesday beat Arsenal 1-0.

A pyrrhic victory if ever there was, with Di Canio never appearing for the club again.

The Italian was playing for West Ham two years later when he picked up the ball rather than shoot, with Everton goalkeeper Paul Gerrard lying stricken in his penalty box.

Alexandersson was on the field, too.

“You never knew what would happen next with Paolo,” says Alexandersson. “He had two completely different sides: one crazy, one very human.

“He was a massive character and great footballer – one of the best I played with.”

With Di Canio exiled, Wednesday were relegated in 1999/00, triggering player-of-the season Alexandersson’s move to Everton, completed directly after a belated major tournament debut at the 2000 European Championship.

Alexandersson had been edged out of Sweden’s 1994 bronze-medal winning World Cup squad by bolter Jesper Blomqvist.

Sweden missed the England-hosted Euro ’96 and, by the slimmest of margins, the World Cup two years later.

“It was astonishing I played in four major championships because I was 29 when I went to my first,” says Alexandersson.

“My goal against England in 2002 is my most memorable for many reasons.

“It was my first World Cup game, against the country where I played my club football, with [fellow Swede] Sven-Goran Eriksson as their manager.”

Alexandersson was back with Gothenburg when his Sweden career was ended by the calf injury he sustained in his 109th game, a win over Greece at the European Championship in 2008.

He went on loan to West Ham in his final Everton season in 2003/04 – living in a hotel while Frida, Noah and daughter Tilda remained up north – but was never tempted to hang around.

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WATCH VIDEO 03:17

DEPARTING MAIER & SEVECKE THANK BLUES

Defender duo Leonie Maier and Rikke Sevecke reflect on their final Everton match as the pair are set to depart the Club this summer.

“Mentally I was already halfway to Sweden,” says Alexandersson.

“I would have earned much more money staying in England but people in Sweden thought I was done – I wanted to show I wasn’t.

“Mainly, I wanted to prove to myself I had more football in me.”

To make his point, reasoned Alexandersson, he needed to keep going another two years, three at a push.

Alexandersson lasted five more years, growing into his senior role.

“I recovered my confidence and won two championships, I won the title as captain and liked having more responsibility,” he says.

“I got back in the national side and won another 40 caps. That was my bonus career.

“My attitude changed after my down period at Everton. I looked in the mirror and learned a lot from that experience.

“You don’t think clearly when you’re in the situation.

“When I came out of it, I appreciated everything more.

"If I had a bad game, I could easily look to the next one. I’d still enjoy training,”

Alexandersson has been in his current job a decade, coaching 200 children aged 12-16.

He’s regularly collared nonetheless for chats about the day he stunned England, or his role in IFK’s last title win 12 years ago.

“Life can feel empty for former players when the limelight disappears,” says Alexandersson.

“It is hard to replicate the adrenaline you experience as a footballer.

“But I love what I am doing, being part of these young people’s development, in football and as human beings.

“I am happy with every decision I made in my career.

“Everton is a great club. I have only good things to say about them.

“I was just disappointed in myself for not playing at the level I could when I was there.”

Alexandersson pulls down the door handle.

The external din steadily rises, a counter to Niclas Alexandersson’s inner peace.