Carl "Ceve" Linde (4 April 1890 – 13 April 1952) was a Swedish football player, manager, administrator and pioneer. He was also involved in Swedish sports in general, and was a prominent sports journalist. He played for IFK Uddevalla and IFK Göteborg during his short playing career. Linde was more successful as a sports manager and administrator, both for IFK Göteborg and the national team. He played a big part in various roles for the national team and the Swedish Football Association, for which he was inducted into the Swedish Football Hall of Fame.
Early years, playing career, and personal life Born in Malmö on 4 April 1890, Carl Linde was the son of Wilhelm Linde (1847–1890), a firefighter who died before Carl was born, and Anna Katarina Lundberg (1850–1925). His mother remarried and moved to Gothenburg when Carl was still young, and he spent his youth in the city. The physical education teacher at his elementary school, Ebbe Lieberath—who later pioneered Swedish Scouting—, had a big impact on Linde, and put the 10-year-old Linde in charge of the ball and equipment when football at Heden was on the schedule. Linde and some of his classmates soon founded the football club "Ynglingarnas Idrottssällskap"—later renamed to or merged with "Underås Idrottssällskap"—in 1900, one of the earliest football clubs in Gothenburg. While at Latinläroverket during his secondary education, Linde participated in some of the first organised school football games in Sweden, playing goalkeeper and midfielder in matches against Realläroverket.
The family moved again when Linde was 14, this time to Uddevalla in 1905, where he took his realskola degree. He brought with him a pair of football boots he had bought in Copenhagen earlier that year—according to himself those were the first pair of football boots sported in Uddevalla. He took part in founding IFK Uddevalla in 1905 and acted as the club's secretary until 1908, and helped found IFK Ljungskile in 1910, the precursor club to Ljungskile SK. Linde was also engaged in sports in general, and initiated the creation of the Bohuslän-Dal Sports Association () in 1906, acting as secretary until he was recruited by IFK Göteborg in 1908.
He never made an appearance in a national competition for IFK Göteborg, but was part of the senior team between 1908 and 1910, during which time he made seven known appearances in friendlies and minor competitions, including the loss against IFK Stockholm in the 1908 Kamratmästerskapen final match. Linde, described as fiery and quick, mainly played as an outside left forward, but had difficulty taking a place in the team that won the Swedish championships in 1908 and 1910. He ended his playing career in 1910 or 1911, but is known to have made an appearance in a friendly again in 1912.
His achievements as a player include winning the Bohuslän-Dal Football Association district championships—a competition he had originally initiated—with IFK Uddevalla and the Gothenburg Football Association district championships with IFK Göteborg, but also winning district championships in bandy with both clubs, the win with IFK Göteborg in 1919 after having played bandy for the club since 1909. Besides football and bandy, Linde also competed in individual sports such as speed skating, athletics, and diving.
After receiving his degree in Uddevalla, Linde moved back to Gothenburg and started vocational training at Göteborgs Bank to become a bank clerk. His later employment gave him knowledge within areas such as risk analysis, organisation, relations, and economics, which he subsequently applied in his sports administrator career. He married Ingrid Karin Johansson (1891–1995), who he had met during his school years in Uddevalla, in 1917. The pair had two children, Bo-Christer (1918–2011), and Inga-Britt (born 1920). Linde maintained a close friendship with Wilhelm Friberg, founder of Gothenburg rivals Örgryte IS and another pioneer within Swedish football, until Friberg's unexpected death in 1932.
Administrative career IFK Göteborg and IFK Malmö
Linde had already held various administrative roles in smaller clubs and associations since he was 15 years old and was also the auditor for IFK Göteborg between 1907 and 1909. But as he ended his short career as a footballer, his new managerial and administrative career really took off. He was part of the board of IFK Göteborg as paymaster in 1910 and 1911, and held a number of different positions on the board during the next ten years, such as master of ceremonies in 1917–1919 and 1921, chairman in 1920, and co-opted member in 1922. He also acted as the team manager from 1917 to 1922. During those years the club won three league titles, Svenska Serien in 1916–17 and Fyrkantserien in 1918 and 1919. The Swedish championship was decided through the cup tournament Svenska Mästerskapet at the time, IFK won in 1918 and reached the semifinals in 1917 and 1920.
He built an impressive international contact network at IFK and dominated the development of the club for 15 years. He brought Danish multi-athlete Nils Middelboe's football philosophy and knowledge to Sweden in 1913, and introduced pre-season training camps in 1917 (a revolutionary concept in Sweden at the time), an idea he had discovered in England during a field trip. As football influences shifted from British to more Central European after the First World War, Linde visited Hungary in 1920 and was impressed by the quick short-passing play of MTK Budapest. A year later, IFK Göteborg contracted Sándor Bródy to coach the club. Bródy became the first Central European head coach in Swedish football. The hiring was the start of an influx of coaches from continental Europe to Sweden, including Willy Meisl, Imre Schlosser, and József Nagy.
At the time of recruiting Bródy, Linde had worked hard to incorporate small neighbourhood clubs, and with the help of their campaign "sports for everyone" ("") IFK could field seventeen senior, junior and youth teams, a Scandinavian record. The membership numbers also increased, and IFK was at the time one of the largest clubs in Europe in terms of members with 1,100.
In 1923 Linde moved to his birth place Malmö, where he continued his administrative career. He was selected as chairman for the football section of IFK Malmö, the only club from Malmö to participate in the inaugural 1924–25 season of the new national league Allsvenskan. He was chairman from 1922 to 1928, until he moved back to Gothenburg in 1928. As soon as Linde was back in Gothenburg, he was again elected to the board of IFK Göteborg, as secretary from 1928 to 1930, and then chairman for the newly created football section board from 1931 onwards. He was also back acting as team manager from 1928 until 1936, a period during which the team won medals in Allsvenskan all nine seasons, the highlight being the Swedish championship title in 1934–35.
Linde is credited with having discovered Herbert Carlsson—the top goalscorer of the 1920 Olympics—, and Gunnar Gren—one of Sweden's greatest footballers, who Linde first saw at a juggling contest he arranged in 1934. Gren, only 13 years old, won the contest against several Allsvenskan players, and Linde wrote a column about the artistry of Gren, likening him to Italian juggler and acrobat Enrico Rastelli.
Swedish Football Association Linde did not only concern himself with the clubs and associations he was closest to, he was from an early age also active in the debate on Swedish football in general, and the Swedish Football Association (SvFF) and national team in particular. As soon as the first ever international for Sweden had been played in 1908, Linde had a letter published in the large Swedish sports newspaper Nordiskt Idrottslif where he complained about the decisions made by SvFF in picking the team.
On 13 October 1913, aged 23, he staged a protest meeting in Exercishuset in Gothenburg attended by around a thousand people. They demanded the resignation of the board of the football association, and the formation of a new Selection Committee () after two devastating losses (0–8 and 0–10) against Denmark. The meeting also demanded that the national team only be composed either of players from Gothenburg or from Stockholm—and not a mix as SvFF had decided—to have a better chance with an already tight-knit team rather than the perceived shortsighted and random existing selection. Linde and the rest of the members of the formed Exercishus Committee were debarred by SvFF for violation of statutes. At the Football Association's annual meeting in 1914, the sitting secretary Anton Johanson suggested re-election of the current board and himself as secretary, laconically adding "you won't get anyone else anyway".
That was just one of many battles with Johanson that were to come. As football in Scania got its national breakthrough, Linde at least found his ally in the chairman of Helsingborgs IF, John "Bill" Pettersson, who had written several critical newspaper columns directed towards SvFF and Anton Johanson before an international planned to be played in Helsingborg in 1915. As with Linde, he was disposed of by Johanson (and the match was moved from Helsingborg), both were soon taken to grace again. But the animosity between Stockholm—the capital and seat of SvFF—and the rest of the country—primarily Gothenburg as the capital of Swedish football—remained, leading Johanson to once exclaim that "Gothenburgers are not real Swedes", while Linde countered with pointing out that Sweden had played more internationals than any other country, but still lacked a playing system and solid tactics.
The turning point came after the 1920 Summer Olympics where Sweden once again did poorly. Linde had had enough, and wrote: The whole story of our Olympic team is from beginning to end a repetition of the sad failure of 1912. Anton Johanson has forgotten a lot, but learnt nothing. Our football has excellent player material, great resources and an enthusiastic audience, but we will always be left behind when it really matters, as long as the football game, the most democratic of all sports, won't be promoted under a despotic and domineering tyrant's dictatorship. — But this is the last straw! — Away with the football-corrupted elements, away with the award-chasing egoists, away with the tail-wagging petty kings, who for years have allowed themselves to be duped by the Potemian builder Johanson's beautiful promises and well-calculated election maneuvers, away with the intriguers, the zeros and the thoughtless pursuers! — Away with Anton Johanson!
Johanson struck back at his enemies by suspending the whole Olympic squad from further national team activities, for breaches of the amateur rules. The question on amateur or professional football was contentious at the time, and Johanson wanted to professionalise Swedish football, while Linde did not. The squad, with support from the enemies Johanson had made, presented evidence that contradicted his story, and also showed that Johanson had previously broken the amateur rules himself, when it suited him. Johanson managed to keep his position as secretary of the Football Association in the annual meeting for 1921, but left the Selection Committee he had chaired since 1917, giving up direct control of the national team to new chairman John "Bill" Pettersson (who had been on the committee since 1918) and his newly elected ally Carl Linde.