Ostersunds chairman Daniel Kindberg insists his club WILL beat Arsenal in Europa League
Former Swedish army lieutenant Kindberg has seen Ostersunds rise from fourth-tier minnows to reach a Europa League last-32 clash with Arsenal
IT WOULD be easy to dismiss Daniel Kindberg as a fantasist.
Except all of the Ostersunds chairman’s fantasies keep coming true.
It was in 2010 that the former Swedish army lieutenant became chairman of the then fourth-tier minnows, who are based in a remote winter sports city, 350 miles north of Stockholm.
He appointed Graham Potter, an unknown Englishman with no managerial experience, and told him he wanted to compete in Europe.
So after three promotions and this season’s extraordinary Europa League run, it is now impossible to ignore Kindberg when he insists Ostersunds WILL beat Arsenal– and that they can one day win the Champions League.
The Swedes saw off Galatasaray on their way to qualifying for the group stage, where they were drawn in a pot with Hertha Berlin and Athletic Bilbao and came second to reach the last 32.
And asked if his club will beat Arsenal, Kindberg, sitting on a sofa in a backroom at the Jamtkraft Arena, told SunSport: “Yes, absolutely. 100 per cent.
“Because I see where they are now and where we are.
“We start the tie at home and we will love to go to the Emirates because it’s a fantastic pitch and it will suit us very well.
“Exactly the same people thought I was crazy in the head when I said we would beat Galatasaray in qualification.
“But it was exactly the perfect moment to do that and it is the same with Arsenal.
“We will win the tie, kick them out and go to the last 16, because that’s what we are about.
“People think I’m stupid when I say we will be in Lyon on May 16 for the final – but that is what we are going for.”
The irrepressible Kindberg’s ambition, though, does not stop there.
He added: “When I took over, we had a turnover of £300,000. Today we have a turnover of £5million.
“If we have a turnover of £5.5m, we will win the Swedish League.
“When we have a turnover of £50m, we will the Champions League because we are better on every pound – putting that into value.
“I am very confident because we have the right people, the right atmosphere, the right ideas, the right decision making.
“It’s not about saying we are in Ostersund, there are no people here, it’s up in the mountains.
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“It’s about the people here and the ideas – we work extremely different to everyone else.
“So we can beat the numbers game because we have the right ideas.”
Kindberg, 50, uses the words of his counterpart at Athletic Bilbao, as evidence of how good his club have become.
He said: “We played Bilbao at home and the first 45 minutes they hardly had the ball, we played them off the pitch.
“They had Barcelona just before we came to Bilbao and played them, and their chairman, who has a lot of experience, said to me straight in the face, ‘You are better than Barcelona except Messi’.”
But Kindberg knows Ostersunds would not be where they are without their brilliant boss Potter, who he insists has a job for life at the club.
Kindberg rates the former journeyman English defender as one of the best managers in Europe and thinks it’s inevitable that big clubs will come calling for his services.
Yet he is also confident the Solihull sensation will stay at Ostersunds for many years to come – and reckons he could match Wenger’s 22-year reign at Arsenal.
Kindberg, who made his money in real estate after leaving the Army, explained: “I said five years ago that he was Scandinavia’s No1 manager and everybody laughed their heads off.
“Now he’s proven - he has been manager of the year two years in a row in Sweden.
“On January 15, he got the leader of the year of all sports in Sweden.
“He is one of the absolute top, top managers in Europe.
“Everybody says he will go here or there - I don’t foresee that.
“Graham is not driven by money. He is driven by achieving things and ambition – and we are just in the beginning of the journey of what we are trying to achieve.
“I think he has a lot to achieve in the future with us.
“Why should he move to whatever club when he can achieve it here?
“I said to Graham and his wife that his oldest son Charlie, who is seven, should graduate here – I haven’t said if that’s high school or uni!”
Kindberg also insists it would be a risk for Potter to move given the short-term thinking of owners in England and other European countries .
He added: “I tell him that it doesn’t matter what contract we have, if we have one year, five years, ten years - if he wants to leave, he can leave.
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“But my advice is that he needs to find a chairman and an owner that can compete with myself, and I don’t foresee too many in Europe that can do that.
“Some clubs sack managers several times per year because they are incompetent. They have the blame games and they have to cover their own asses.
“I don’t think Graham should be in that situation. He is too good as a person and as a manager.
“He’s a dear, dear friend for me, at least a brother for me, so I would never advise him to do that.
“He could easily manage in the Premier League but he needs an owner, a chairman, of my standard - and I don’t know if that there are too many of them.”