Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, told by those who know her best...
The Chelsea and Sweden star is in the form of her life, but those who remember the early days talk of a teenage girl who had to overcome serious injuries and bad luck to reach the top...
“When I saw her for the first time, I saw something there I’d not seen anywhere else in Sweden,” says Lasse Öberg, the former head coach of Forsby FF in Köping.
Öberg is speaking about Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, the Swedish star who is currently in the form of her life for Chelsea, but it’s Öberg who was one of the first in the remote part of the countryside she grew up in to spot her fledgling talent.
While right now the flying winger is in some of the best form of her career for Chelsea, winning multiple domestic titles, starting the new season in superb style and approaching a 50th cap for her country, it hasn’t always been this simple.
Too often, fate appeared to conspire against Rytting Kaneryd, whether it be her two ACL injuries or joining one of Europe’s elite clubs just as they went bankrupt.
But almost 20 years ago, her journey began just a mile from her hometown of Kolsva, where Öberg was working as a coach in a local skills school when he came across a 10-year-old Rytting Kaneryd.
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“When I first met her, she was about 10 years old,” recalls Öberg. “She was so skilful; she could make the guys look amateur. Her father and I worked as carpenters together for 15 years. I only started coaching Forsby to have something to do, it was really fun, a group with a lot of talented young girls.
“By the time she came to Forsby, Johanna was 13, I picked her up in the first team and people said, ‘you cannot do that’. I said, ‘I don’t go after age, I go after skill’, and to be honest she was probably too skilful for us.”
It didn’t take long for Rytting Kaneryd to start appearing on the radars of Sweden’s top clubs.
After a first call-up for Sweden’s Under 15s in 2012, some of Sweden’s biggest and best spent the subsequent couple of years courting her talent, before she joined the mighty Tyresö FF at the start of 2014, with its array of stars from Marta to Christen Press, Veronica Boquete to Caroline Seger.
“She had to go, she was too good for our team,” admits Oberg. “We were playing third division football. I used to say, ‘you should have a toolbox as big as you can’ and growing up I had a tool called lazy! Johanna doesn’t have that.
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