The End: Crystal Palace vs Leeds United, 31st January 1998

On YouTube you can watch the exact moment that Tomas Brolin's football career ended, on November 16th, 1994. He was playing for Sweden that night, against Hungary, in a Euro '96 qualifier in Stockholm. In other words, he was right at home.

Parma was his club but he didn't get top billing in Serie A. Gianfranco Zola and Faustino Asprilla occupied the forward positions and his job now was to be a deep playmaker. He was brilliant at it, and his career in Italy earned him winner's medals in the Coppa Italia, European Cup Winners' Cup, European Super Cup and the UEFA Cup. But he had to be productive without being exuberant. His runs from midfield with the ball and vibrating with possibilities always ended with a pass to Zola or Asprilla, who would set up themselves or each other and take the headlines.

Playing for Sweden was different. The national team had good players and big names — Martin Dahlin, Anders Limpar, Kennet Andersson, Henrik Larsson — but Brolin had the free role and the limelight. In the 1990 World Cup he scored against Brazil. At Euro '92 he was joint top scorer with three, including the iconic goal he made against England with Dahlin's help. In the USA at the 1994 World Cup Brolin scored another three and was picked for the all-star team after Sweden finished third. He was 24, and was voted Sweden's footballer of the year for the second time.

The team hadn't been fancied before World Cup '94, but Euro '96 now looked like an opportunity. Qualifying started with a win away to Iceland before a 4-2 defeat in Switzerland, but at home to Hungary a month later, Brolin put Sweden back on track. Just before half-time, spotting a weak defensive header, he sprang into the penalty area and, with a shuffle to set himself, controlled the ball on his knee and volleyed past the keeper in one split-second movement. A spinning air-punch followed to celebrate, as it always did, and the replays showed the quick-thinking skill that warranted it.

With twenty minutes left Brolin turned creator for a second goal. He chipped the ball wide for Roland Nilsson, who followed Brolin's forward run with a pass into the penalty area. Brolin controlled and, after a slight pause while the ball bounced, span and hit a low cross that Dahlin couldn't miss at the back post. He'd built the goal from near the half-way line, and Dahlin, grinning, shrugged off Larsson because he wanted to congratulate Brolin.

But something was wrong. As soon as he'd crossed, still spinning, Brolin's hand had stretched towards his foot. Now he was lying on his side on the grass. Larsson came to smack Brolin's backside but Dahlin had looked at his face, heard his cries, looked at his ankle, and was up, waving frantically to the bench. An alert trainer was already coming but Dahlin kept waving for more. Tomas needed help.

As he'd twisted to cross his standing ankle had twisted its own way, sliding beneath his leg, as he showed the physio with a movement of his hand, before burying his face in his arms again, which didn't do much to disguise his uncontrollable sobbing. While one trainer held the broken leg in place, another simply held Brolin as he lay crying. A stretcher was brought, and a blanket, and Brolin was taken away, and that was that, in November 1994. The end.

Of course, November 1995 took Brolin to Leeds, and the story of Brolin's post-injury purgatory in Yorkshire is well known. Perhaps it could have been a resurrection, if Howard Wilkinson hadn't asked him to defend, if Brolin hadn't petulantly "decided I was going to be piss-poor" in what ended up being a 5-0 defeat to Liverpool, if George Graham hadn't blown up a dispute with a player into a self-defeating imprisonment: Brolin was banned from Thorp Arch and Elland Road, where he had to buy a ticket if he wanted to see the game, but his passport was locked in George Graham's office, so he couldn't get in and he couldn't get out. To Swedish customs officers that cherubic face was all the passport they needed, but that only made Graham angrier.