Do You Remember Them #17- Marcus Allback

Biodata

Full Name: Marcus Christian Allback

Nationality: Swedish

Date of Birth: 5 July 1973

Position: Striker

Former Clubs:

1992- 2000 Orgryte

1997 Lygnby Boldklub (loan)

1998 Bari (loan)

2000- 2002 Heerenveen

2002- 2004 Aston Villa

2004- 2005 Hansa Rostock

2005- 2008 Copenhagen

2008- 2009 Orgryte

2011 Orgryte

International Career:

1999- 2008 Sweden

Achievement:

Orgryte

2000 Swedish Cup

Copenhagen

2005- 2006 Danish Superliga

2006- 2007 Danish Superliga

Career

The Swedish national team have famously produced some elite attacking talents throughout the recent footballing period. These attacking talents such as Henrik Larson, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Emil Forsberg had played their part in Europe top leagues in recent years. However, there is also one clinical striker who scored whenever he played for, scored 30 goals in 74 caps for Sweden national team and seventh-highest goalscorer in the Swedish national team. He is Marcus Allback.

Marcus Allback’s career started in a Gothenburg based local club, Orgryte. He spent most of the early stage of his career in his boyhood club barred two loan spells in Lygnby BK and Bari, in which both of his loan spells are not successful as he only scored once in two loan spells. However, this is not the case when we returned to the Swedish club. In Orgryte, Allback scored 86 goals in almost 200 appearances for the club. He even got his national team debut in 1999 in a match against South Africa. In his last season in Sweden, his goals helped his club to win the Swedish Cup. This is their first and only Swedish Cup in the club’s history and their first silverware in 15 years.

In 2000, Allback joined Dutch side, Heerenveen for 1.1mil Euro. In his first half-season in the Netherland, he scored 10 goals in 16 matches which helped the underperforming Heerenveen side to escape relegation. He even scored a hat trick against Willem II in his fourth match for his new club. In the next season, Allback proved to be more clinical as he registered 15 goals and 7 assists in the league. His goal contributions had helped Heerenveen to a fifth-place finish in the league. After leading Sweden national team to a Last-16 finish in 2002 FIFA World Cup, he was signed for the English Premier League side, Aston Villa. Unfortunately, Allback couldn’t claim a regular starting spot in Aston Villa as Juan Pablo Angel and Darius Vassell was preferred by both Graham Taylor and David O’Leary under their management. He only managed to score 7 goals in all competition for two seasons in Aston Villa. After two relatively unsuccessful years in the Villa Park where he was mostly underplayed, Allback joined German side Hansa Rostock.

His life in Germany isn’t spectacular either. He only managed to score 4 goals and registered one assist in all competition. He even got himself sent off in a match against Schalke 04 when they fight for relegation. After Hansa Rostock was confirmed relegated from Bundesliga, Allback subsequently moved on to join Copenhagen. He found his goal scoring form in Denmark. In his first season in Denmark, he scored 15 goals in 30 league matches to help Copenhagen to win the league title. Allback also famously scored a winner against Manchester United in UEFA Champions League group stage match. Fun fact, this was also Copenhagen’s first-ever Champions League goal in their entire club history. In his three seasons stay in Denmark, he continued to score clinically. He even presented with the fans’ Player of the Year in the 2006-2007 season.

On July 2008, Allback returned to Sweden to rejoin his former club, Orgryte, which is a second division side when he joined. He has then registered 5 goals and 3 assists in just 12 league matches and helped his team promoted to the Allsvenskan. However, he still could not prevent his club to get relegated in his second season in the club. Allback announced his retirement from football after the season ended. He eventually returned for one match in 2011 when Orgryte competed in the third tier of Swedish football two years after his retirement.

Post Retirement

On 7 November 2009, Allbäck was named as the new assistant coach of the Sweden national football team. After almost seven years in the national team coaching staff, he stepped down from this position in 2016, following Sweden's disappointing Euro 2016 campaign.