I came fourth in the Ballon d’Or and was the most expensive foreign player in British football history… but I now sell vacuum cleaners

Imagine if Mohamed Salah quit football tonight. This is incomprehensible. You could never predict this would happen on this planet.

What would it take to leave him? Is there a chance to play in the World Chess Championship? A new deal as President of Egypt? Is he worth more than the nearly £34m he is set to earn at Liverpool before his contract expires in 2027? Even then I’m not so sure.

How about they stop selling vacuum cleaner nozzles?

That’s exactly what Tomas Brolin did in 1998. Just as Mohamed Salah finished fourth in this year’s Ballon d’Or voting, Tomas Brolin also finished fourth in 1994, just four years before his retirement.

Okay, the Salah comparison is very exaggerated. Admittedly, things had gotten worse for Brolin through injury and weight struggles and he was a flop at Leeds, but he still had some talent. He was 28 years old and had many years of career ahead of him to rebuild his name.

So why did a man known as one of the greatest Swedish footballers ever go all-out to sell noisy domestic products and play poker?

He finished fourth in the Ballon d’Or voting in 1994 after helping Sweden finish third at the World Cup.

It all happened thanks to a meeting with inventor Goran Edlund. The entrepreneur had developed a new vacuum cleaner head that was lighter, more efficient and easier to clean than its competitors. An offer no self-respecting Hoover could refuse.

He was looking for investment and Brolin was willing. He acquired a 50 percent stake in the Twinner brand, which still exists today and has moved units in Sweden and the United Kingdom.

‘He was a strange man: an inventor. He proposed a new idea for a new type of vacuum cleaner. It literally caught my attention and I started a company with it. “That push was what made me never want to go back again,” Brolin told La Gazzetta dello Sport.

‘At the time everyone told me that 28 was too early to retire, but I replied: ‘It depends on what you do with those 28 years.’ I had already achieved so much. Life is too short to do boring things. I don’t do things I don’t enjoy.

‘I needed one more thing. My mind was searching for new experiences and being an entrepreneur helped me. I discovered a new world, learned a trade, and challenged myself again.

‘Now, if I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I always want to challenge myself in every field. ‘I did it with football, I did it with my job.’

And so he entered the game. Thus ended Brolin’s football career.

He is right to say that he has achieved a lot. Brolin helped Sweden finish third at the 1994 World Cup, their best finish in the modern era. He was part of the iconic Parma team of the 1990s; He won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, UEFA Cup, UEFA Super Cup and Coppa Italia. He was named Swedish footballer of the year twice.

Leeds broke the record transfer fee by signing him for £4.5 million in 1995, but this backfired.

A devastating ankle injury in 1994 left him struggling with fitness, but Leeds gave him a chance a year later

He is also a name many England fans will remember after scoring the goal that eliminated Graham Taylor’s men from Euro 1992.

In November 1995, Brolin joined Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds United in a record signing fee of £4.5 million. There were some concerns about his weight, but optimism was in the air.

With Leeds having just finished fifth in the Premier League, Brolin had the chance to boost his career. He had suffered a devastating ankle injury in the summer of 1994 and barely played in his final year at Parma.

And things started off well. He quickly earned the nickname ‘baby-faced assassin’, but the feeling did not last long as his fitness declined and his form declined.

Wilkinson wasn’t impressed with his work ethic, but Brolin seemed optimistic. ‘When you’ve been away from the game for almost a year like me, you need time,’ he said.

I also need time to get used to the Premier League; Maybe more time than I thought I’d need. It is difficult, fast football and there are no easy matches. ‘I have the option of leaving at the end of the season, but I still want to do well and be successful in England.’

There were also extenuating circumstances. Brolin understood that he would be the one pulling the strings in the attacking midfield, but was eventually deployed as a striker or on the right wing; these positions were not very familiar to him.

The writing was on the wall. Later that year, an April Fools’ Day interview on Swedish television also backfired. Brolin jokingly announced that he would be loaned to Swedish side IFK Norrköping, but the media took it seriously and the news spread around the world. Little did he know that he would actually be walking out the door soon.

But Brolin had trouble convincing him and fell out with manager Howard Wilkinson, and then became even more acrimonious with his successor, George Graham.

Swede stays in vacuum cleaner nozzle business after meeting an inventor

He was known to be a foodie to the extent that it affected his fitness.

In the summer of 1996, just a year after he joined, Leeds were ready to sell him for £2 million; that was less than half of what they signed him for.

“Obviously, I’d rather have someone in my team in any position who doesn’t want to do good things for Leeds United,” Wilkinson said.

Loans to Zurich (£800 a week) and Parma followed for the 1996–97 season, and when he returned later that summer he was up against George Graham, a manager he described as ‘an even bigger fool’ than Wilkinson.

But Brolin couldn’t help himself. He arrived late at Leeds’ pre-season camp because, according to him, a bird crashed into his windscreen, delaying him and causing him to miss his flight. When he finally arrived, Graham locked his passport in a locker while the rest of the team went on tour.

To highlight how unwelcome he was, Brolin wasn’t even allowed to watch Leeds for free at Elland Road. While he described it as ‘bullying’, Graham branded him ‘disrespectful’.

He eventually made a move but only went to Crystal Palace, where he was deemed ‘too fat to play’ and was relegated. After a brief stint with Sweden’s fourth-tier team Hudiksvall ABK, he retired after playing one match there in 1998. A modest ending.

Brolin’s reputation in English football is very bad. In 2003, Leeds fans voted him the club’s worst player in living memory in a BBC Sport poll.

And in 2007, his reputation was in tatters. The Times asked fans: Who is the worst player in the top flight since 1970? George Weah’s fake cousin Ali Dia, who played 52 minutes for Southampton, came first. And the second? That would be Brolin.

Maybe vacuum cleaners weren’t such a bad idea after all…