Beautiful leggy Swede banned from space

The short tale of a Swede banned from space and how to not get banned yourself.

When I think of Sweden, I think of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrik Larsson and beautiful blondes like Freddie Ljungberg. 

But after a recent discussion with an R1 enthusiast another Swede comes to mind when I hear “IKEA”.

Stefan Schwarz.

He was a Swedish holding midfielder who had a great career playing for a lot of big clubs: Benfica, Arsenal, Florentina, Valencia, Sunderland and Sweden 69 times.

None of that interested me at all, but what did was his “Space Clause”.

After signing for Sunderland in 1999 for a record fee of £3.75m, they wanted to protect themselves from his desire to become a space tourist.

Stefan publicly stated he wanted to explore space, hence the clause preventing him from going outside the atmosphere.

That got me thinking: 

1. It’s stupid to express unusual desires as a public figure. If he went into space after signing for Sunderland no one would have cared. Just do it and apologise later. That is the lesson here for any professional footballers reading this.

2. Who else has had weird clauses in their contract?

So, I found some for your entertainment:

• Ronaldinho had Flamengo allow him to hit the town twice a week without getting a fine or other repercussions.

• Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain had a clause in his Arsenal deal that meant the Gunners would pay Southampton £10,000 every time he played 20 minutes or more. If you saw him subbed on in the 71^st minute you know why.

• Luis Suarez had a ‘no biting’ clause when signing for Barcelona.

• Rolf-Christel Guie-Mien instructed Eintracht Frankfurt to arrange cooking classes for his wife as part of his deal to join them in 1999.

• Neil Ruddock had a “10 per cent penalty” for being over the huge weight of 99.8kg according to Simon Jordan.