Ambitious Freddie Ljungberg has chance to keep it in the Arsenal family

There appears to be two Freddie Ljungbergs. One is relaxed, carefree and spontaneous w88 line – the other is incredibly stubborn and ruthlessly ambitious. “I am not particularly disciplined,” the Swede once said, “but I am stubborn like few.”

On Friday the 42-year-old was appointed Arsenal’s interim coach after the sacking of Unai Emery, and there is no doubt which Ljungberg will throw himself into his new role. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the former Arsenal midfielder and, like always, he will do everything possible to succeed. As he said in that same interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri: “As a child I could lie in bed and do absolutely nothing for hours but once I decided to do something, big or small, I could not stop until it had been completed. That is my driving force, for better or worse.”



Ljungberg’s path to the Arsenal job has not been straightforward. After leaving the club in 2007 he played for West Ham, Seattle Sounders, Chicago Fire, Celtic, Shimizu S-Pulse and Mumbai City before retiring in 2014. At first he had no desire to go into coaching but, unlike some, he realised “you can only play so much golf”. In 2015 Ljungberg asked Andries Jonker, the then Arsenal academy manager, whether he could join the coaching staff and started with the club’s under-16 team w88 mobile .

The more he coached, the more inspired he became, his competitive instincts quickly reawoken. In 2017, when Jonker took over as the manager of Wolfsburg, he followed the Dutchman as the assistant but was back at Arsenal coaching the under-23s within a year before being promoted to the first team last June.

Over the years the mindset has changed and he has, for quite some time, had a desire to become a manager. Those close to him describe him as a “sponge”, talking of a quick learner eager to listen to advice. He enjoyed his brief spell working for Emery and felt the Spaniard was a good coach, even if Emery struggled to communicate his ideas to Arsenal’s players. Ljungberg relished the opportunity to learn from Emery, who won the Europa League three times with Sevilla, and he admired his training drills.

Yet Ljungberg could feel which way the wind was blowing in recent weeks. He has been preparing to take over, making sure he was ready if he had to step in on an interim basis, and he will do all he can to land the job on a permanent basis.

Arsenal are his club. He was signed by Arsène Wenger in 1998 and became a key member of the team. Ljungberg scored vital goals when Arsenal won the double in 2002, was a member of the Invincibles side in 2004 and won the FA Cup in 2003 and 2005.


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Ljungberg will want Arsenal to reconnect with the best of Wengerball. He is not a pragmatist like Emery and built an excellent reputation coaching Arsenal’s under-23s last season. He stuck to his ideals despite a slow start, which demonstrated self-confidence, and his insistence on quick, attacking football bore fruit. Arsenal’s results improved and youngsters who have worked under Ljungberg, such as Joe Willock and Bukayo Saka, speak glowingly of his coaching.

Ljungberg will want Willock and Saka involved, though he is unlikely to start a youth revolution. He knows he needs to bring the experienced players onside and it is thought that he will keep Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as captain. Arsenal have a daunting run next month and Ljungberg is taking a realistic view. Although it is encouraging the club have told him to put together a backroom staff, he has not been promised anything.

He will give it everything, as always. A while back a teammate from his first club, Halmstad, Abbe Hintsa, talked about how Ljungberg hated it when others did not work hard enough in training. Hintsa also told of one game when he had been chopped down by an opponent and Ljungberg vowed to exact revenge. He clattered the player who had injured Hintsa, received his marching orders and said on the way off the pitch: “Don’t touch my mate.”