Jordan Larsson's star on the rise as he looks to step out of his father's shadow

Now in his sixth year as a professional, he has just been sold to Spartak Moscow for €4 million, making him the third most expensive Allsvenskan export of all time, Jordan is finally starting to shake dad’s shadow, but it hasn’t been easy. For many of those years, every goal he scored was endlessly analysed and compared to his old man. At one stage Henrik was even Jordan’s manager at Helsingborg, doing little to alleviate the comparisons.

For a young player trying to find his feet and forge a career, it was a no-win situation. When Jordan started brightly in his second senior season at the club, scoring five goals in his first 13 games, the hype was excessive. Yet when Helsingborg started to nosedive and his goals dried up, the then teenager was hammered. Criticised for not being as good as Henrik, and accused of only playing because of who the boss was.

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An easy target for knucklehead ultras, it all came to an ugly climax in a relegation play-off against Halmstad. Jordan scored but when Helsingborg lost that didn’t matter – masked thugs stormed the pitch and headed straight for the younger Larsson, attempting to take the shirt from his back and even throwing a punch. Henrik, who grew up as a mixed race child in 1970s Sweden and knows how to handles himself, eventually managed to help push the goons back.

That incident brought an end to Jordan’s first spell in Sweden and threatened to derail his development. A hasty move to Dutch minnows NEC in 2017 proved to be founded on broken promises. Told he would be the next big thing, once the ink was dry it only took three matches for the coach to inform him he would never be a starter. Larsson knew he had made a mistake, and eventually managed to secure a return to his homeland when he signed for Norrköping in 2018.

The transfer was met with little fanfare. Many in Sweden had already written Jordan off as another youngster with wasted potential, and a near goalless first year at Norrköping appeared to confirm suspicions. But as Sportbladet journalist Makoto Asahara explains to The Herald, those setbacks would ultimately lay the groundwork for the explosion of quality taking place today. “That tough first year forced him to apply a different attitude to football and to himself as a player. To put the team before the individual. The fruit of that has been evident since spring.”

This year the forward’s transformation has been nothing short of remarkable. Finally playing as a central striker rather than on the wing, the pay-off is 11 goals in 16 league matches, and one in two Europa League qualifiers. Though his last game for Norrköping was on July 21st, Larsson is still top scorer in Sweden. “He’s a hard working player in a completely different way now, involved in a large amount of chances, which produces a lot of goals. That’s to do with his mentality and work-rate,” Asahara notes.

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Accused in the past of only scoring “pretty goals”, Larsson has become more ruthless. Along with the rockets and volleys he has added neat, subtle finishes from inside the area to his game – the bread and butter true goalscorers live off. Goals created by crafty, well-timed runs that catch defenders unaware. His creativity is now expressed off the ball as much as it is on it.

That transformation into a pure striker hasn’t passed unnoticed, and it only took half a season for suitors to come calling. In late July, Spartak Moscow made their move, securing the striker’s services for a fee in the region of €4m. It is the third highest figure ever paid to sign an Allsvenskan player, trailing only Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Markus Rosenberg’s moves from Malmö to Ajax in the early 2000s. But has Larsson chosen well this time? Asahara thinks so.

“There are several good examples of players who went from Sweden to Russia and achieved success. Nobody questions the development of Viktor Claesson since moving to Krasnodor for example.” After moving to Russia, Claesson blossomed into one of the first names on the Sweden teamsheet, starting all of their 2018 World Cup matches.

That is the kind of development Larsson has his sights set on, and even if it is not the most romantic move, Asahara is convinced Spartak is more likely to work out for Jordan than attempting to mimic his dad.

“Though I understand Celtic would have been nice for nostalgia, the Scottish league isn’t the same today as it was in Henrik’s heyday. Russia is a league where you face really good opposition, and on top of that, in very difficult conditions that will toughen you. It’s an exciting choice,” he concludes.

Signed off the back of being Sweden’s top scorer rather than being Henrik’s son, Jordan now has a new standard to live up to. His own.