Anders, I’m not sure how many people know, but as a young boy in Sweden playing football
in the street, you were an Evertonian!
Yeah, I’m a Blue through and through! Apparently it was ‘79/80 when I started to watch Everton
and a certain player called Imre Varadi. He is from Hungary and my father is from Hungary,
but I liked Everton from the start. I even watched them a couple of years earlier – I
watched Bob Latchford a lot, so I’ve been an Evertonian since those days.
What was it like for you as a boyhood Evertonian, after watching your Latchfords and Imre Varadis,
when you found out that Everton were interested in taking you to Goodison?
The thing was, if you go back to [when I signed for Arsenal in] 1990, the press conference,
which wasn’t big; it was like two or three reporters. I stood there with my Arsenal shirt
and the reporter asked me, ‘You must be happy now, because you must be an Arsenal
supporter?’ and this is the truth, I said, ‘No, I’m an Evertonian’. I stood at
the press conference with an Arsenal shirt saying to the reporter, ‘I’m an Evertonian’.
Four years later I signed for Everton, the same reporter was there at Bellefield when
I was stood there with Mike Walker and my Everton top. He said, ‘You must be really
proud now?’ and I had the best smile ever. That’s a true story.
[Commentator] Stuart… It’s over! Everton have done all that they could do for themselves
and it looks as though it’s enough. When a victory was critical, they’ve come up
with it, but what a way to do it!
It nearly went spectacularly wrong - May 1994, that game against Wimbledon. If we take it
in order, were there nerves before the game? Were you thinking to yourself, ‘We can’t
get relegated. I can’t be part of a team that gets Everton Football Club relegated’?
That is true, because we were a little bit afraid before the game – to be relegated,
a big club… it couldn’t happen. We needed to win that game and we started off on the
wrong foot from the beginning. We were 1-0 down – Gary Ablett, bless him, scored an
own goal, so suddenly we were 2-0 down after 25 minutes. We needed to win. That was a horrible
feeling.
What were you doing in our penalty area for the corner?
I know, I wasn’t there often – and that sums it up! I went in my own penalty box and
took it with my hand, for some reason I just wanted to push it away. The crowd just went
mad.
I think it was Graham Stuart who scored to make it 2-1 just before half-time. That was
the gasoline for us actually.
What did Joe Royle do differently when he arrived in the November?
The difference was that he took all the good players and he asked them almost what to do.
How should we play? What’s your history? So we had to decide a little bit how to play.
He came in with Willie Donachie and suddenly we started to train good and eat good. He
changed it all around and suddenly we clicked with Joe and Willie from the start. And that’s
the best thing that happened for Everton for a long time.
A lot of Evertonians still say to this day that the 4-1 win against Tottenham Hotspur
in the FA Cup semi-final at Elland Road was the best Everton performance of the 90s…
Oh, really? I can agree with that because we were so fired up in the dressing room before.
We knew we were going to play Spurs with Jurgen Klinsmann, a high-profile name. We just went
out there with nothing to lose really – and we smashed them 4-1.
You must look back on the FA Cup final against Manchester United with a lot of pride as well,
because, again, we weren’t expected to win, but played really well…
In 1995, we have to remember that Manchester United were one of the best teams in England.
I can honestly say that there were 20 players and five staff who believed we were going
to win that day. The rest of the world gave us no chance.
We had such a great team spirit in Everton in the mid-90s – it’s hard to beat that,
wherever I’ve been. I’ve been to many clubs, national sides… the team spirit was
like a family. It was like you were playing with your brothers. You can’t pinpoint it,
but it was the best feeling ever.
[Commentator] Four Everton players cross the halfway line… Stuart to Limpar’s left…
it’s Kanchelskis to his right. Andrei Kanchelskis gets number two for Everton – and number
two for his tally for the season!
The team really pushed on the following season when Joe brought Andrei Kanchelskis in. With
Anders Limpar one wing, Kanchelskis on the other, we brushed some teams aside…
Oh, yeah. To have two wide players with quality like that, you need hard-working players in
the middle. We had John Ebbrell, Barry Horne, Joe Parkinson… they were so good winning
the ball back and providing it to us wide players. It was like a team effort. We had
a great defence and Neville in goal. We were an all-round very, very good side. We weren’t
the top one or two in England, but we were certainly just below that.
Joe Royle often says Andrei Kanchelskis was his best signing, but that you were the most
talented player he ever worked with…
That’s nice to hear. To play with Andrei, I have to agree. Wow, what a player. He was
one of the best players I ever played with. He was a true professional. He could score
goals with either foot, he could set up goals, he was a hard worker, he was a nice man. He
was the total package of a professional player.
What happened in the end when you left Everton?
I’m not actually sure. What I can remember is that I didn’t play that much in 1997
for some reason. If I was bad or I don’t know actually…. All I know is that I was
a little bit fed up after 12 years abroad. Jesper was seven years old so we wanted to
go back to Sweden for him to go to school. I remember Everton offered me another three-year
contract and that’s one thing I really regret in my life that I didn’t sign again. So
I went on loan to Birmingham for some reason and from Birmingham we went back to Sweden.
I totally regret that. I should have stayed another three years with Everton. That’s
a dark period in my life, to leave Everton.
Talking of playing with great players, you played in one of the best Swedish sides of
all time. Euro ’92, the World Cup in ’94…
True. When we played the World Cup in 1990, we lost three games and came almost last and
got so much stick from the people back home. At that time, we had old players and very
young players, so we cleaned out all the old players and brought in Tomas Brolin, Jonas
Thern and Dahlin. So from 1990-97 we had the same team. We came third in the European Championships
in 1992, third in the World Cup in ’94 and over that period of seven years, we lost five
or six games. We had players who were outstanding in their teams in Europe – Parma, Milan,
Roma, Everton, whatever… We had seven players who were captains in big clubs in Europe.
We were all good at the same time. That’s hard to beat and we won’t get the Swedish
team like that again for many years.
[Stadium announcer] Please welcome back to Goodison Park… Anders Limpar!
You love coming back to Goodison, don’t you?
I love this place and that’s from my heart. I love the hospitality here and it’s always
a warm welcome. I’m just one phone call away and Everton helps me so much. And that’s
a good feeling for me because I’m an Evertonian.