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 g…