Martin Bengtsson: football’s Swedish wonderkid whose dream died at Inter

If Martin Bengtsson feels stressed he kicks a football around on his own and, almost immediately, the tension begins to ebb away. “Nowadays I play for meditation,” he says. “I have a very natural and close relationship with the ball; we still have a good rapport.”

Bengtsson is 36 but, 20 years ago, his first touch was so seamlessly adhesive that opponents could have been forgiven for believing he and footballs were inseparable. The then Sweden youth international was such a gifted midfielder that he was swiftly snapped up by Internazionale’s academy; which is where everything went wrong.

He arrived in Milan hyped as one of the biggest talents Sweden had produced but departed less than a year later in the grip of severe depression apparently exacerbated by, among other things, a distinct lack of paternalism or emotional intelligence on the part of Inter’s staff.

According to Bengtsson, not content with failing to provide him with Italian lessons they tore up the sheets of paper covered with the creative writing he had begun producing in his free time. Eventually, the prodigy, did the unthinkable and walked out before turning his back on the game.

These days a man whose creativity was most definitely not confined to his feet is a full-time writer, with his autobiography, In the Shadow of San Siro, now a compellingly thought-provoking and highly artistic film, Tigers, directed by Ronnie Sandahl.

After meeting on a book tour in 2011 the pair vowed during a drunken night out to bring Bengtsson’s story to the big screen and the fulfilment of this pledge has been well worth waiting for.

“I used writing as a way of relieving pressure in the football world but now I usually go out with a football when I need to relax from working