Rangers and Malmo will clash in Sweden in their Europa League group opener on Thursday night – and both clubs are close to the heart of one man.
Former Sweden international Robert Prytz started out his career with the Scandinavians and featured in their European Cup final defeat to Nottingham Forest as a teenager before moving to Ibrox just three years later to become only the second Swede to play for the club after Orjan Persson in the late 1960s. He spent three years with the Gers between 1982 and 1985, picking up two winners’ medals in the League Cup as Sir Alex Ferguson‘s legendary Aberdeen side dominated the domestic scene in Scotland.
After struggling to hold down a regular place under the then Rangers boss John Greig, Prytz then returned to his homeland for a spell with Malmo’s rivals IFK Goteborg before spending the next seven years between 1986 and 1993 in Switzerland, Germany and Italy with Young Boys, Uerdingen 05, Atalanta and Verona.
After second spells with both Malmo and Young Boys, the former Swedish Footballer of the Year embarked on a whistle stop tour of Scotland as he winded down his career, playing for now fewer than six teams; Kilmarnock, Dumbarton, Cowdenbeath, East Fife, Hamilton and Pollock. In his two seasons with the West of Scotland Premier League club, he helped them lift a Central Sectional League Cup and West of Scotland Junior Cup double in 2000 at the age of 40 before hanging up his boots for good a year later after a brief stint with the Accies.
Despite his renown across Europe, Prytz once admitted he had spent so long away from Sweden that people had forgotten who he was on his return from Scotland. Speaking to The Times in 2011, he said: “It took awhile for people to recognise me because I had been away for so long, but they do now.”
Prytz also reflected on his spell at Ibrox four years ago and conceded he would have jumped at the chance to return to show fans what he was really capable of. In another interview with The Times, he said: “When I first came to Rangers I remember one of my team-mates came up to me in the dressing-room before a Celtic game and said, ‘Robert, don’t be scared’,” says Prytz. “I said to him: ‘Scared? Why should I be scared? I’ve played in a European Cup final.’
“But I was still very young when I went to Rangers — maybe 20 or 21. I learned later in my career that, as you get older, you get more intelligent in the way you play football. But I didn’t have that [wisdom] with me when I was at Rangers.
“Also, I found the football in Scotland to be 100 miles an hour stuff. It just wasn’t my style. I played more of a European style of game, which is maybe why I went on to have quite a good career in Italy.
“Scottish football, at that stage of my career, was quite difficult for me, because of the way it was played. Too fast, too hard.”
The 56-time Sweden cap continued: “I had to leave Rangers. Apart from anything else, I was worried about losing my place in the Sweden national team. I felt I had to go somewhere where I would play regular football. So I went to Young Boys in Switzerland, where we won the cup and the championship, and then to Bayer Uerdingen in Germany, and then to Verona and Atalanta in Italy.
“But I would have loved to have gone back to Rangers. People have said that, had I stayed for one more year after 1985, when Graeme Souness took over, I might have done well under him. I don’t know.”