Lennart Johanssons Pokal
Encyclopedia
Lennart Johanssons Pokal is a trophy
Trophy
A trophy is a reward for a specific achievement, and serves as recognition or evidence of merit. Trophies are most often awarded for sporting events, from youth sports to professional level athletics...

 awarded annually by the Swedish Football Association
Swedish Football Association
The Swedish Football Association is the governing body of football in Sweden. It organises the football leagues — Allsvenskan for men and Damallsvenskan for women — and the men's and women's national teams. It is based in Solna and is a founding member of both FIFA and UEFA...

 to the football club that wins Allsvenskan
Allsvenskan
Allsvenskan is a Swedish professional league for association football clubs. At the top of the Swedish football league system, it is the country's primary football competition. Contested by 16 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with Superettan...

, Swedens highest football league. The trophy was introduced in 2001 after it had become known that Clarence von Rosen
Clarence von Rosen
Count Clarence von Rosen was a Swedish athlete, military officer, and Master of the Horse to the King of Sweden. He became a member of the International Olympic Committee in 1900, and was credited for the re-introduction of Equestrian at the Summer Olympics after it was dropped at the 1904 Olympic...

, the man after which the previous trophy was named, had nazi sympathies during the 1930's. The first club to lift the trophy was Hammarby IF
Hammarby IF
Hammarby Fotboll is a Swedish football club based in Johanneshov - just south of Södermalm, the southernmost district of Stockholm city centre...

 in 2001 and most recently Helsingborgs IF
Helsingborgs IF
Helsingborgs IF , commonly referred to as Helsingborg and locally HIF, is a Swedish football club located in Helsingborg. They are currently playing in the highest Swedish league, Allsvenskan...

 in 2011
2011 Allsvenskan
The 2011 Allsvenskan, part of the 2011 Swedish football season, was the 87th season of Allsvenskan since its establishment in 1924. The preliminary 2011 fixtures were released on 15 December 2010. The season began on 2 April 2011 and ended on 23 October 2011...

. Djurgårdens IF are the club to lift the trophy the most times having lifted it in 2002, 2003 and 2005.

The trophy

The trophy is made of silver
Silver
Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 and has a football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 mounted on a socle
Socle (architecture)
In architecture, a socle is a short plinth used to support a pedestal, sculpture or column. In the field of archaeology, this term is used to refer to a wall base, frequently of stone, that supports the upper part of the wall, which is made of a different material, frequently mud brick...

 with two large handles on each side of the socle. The trophy was designed by Anja Nibbler Kothe and was inspired by a trophy that the Sweden national football team
Sweden national football team
The Swedish national football team represents Sweden in association football and is controlled by the Swedish Football Association, the governing body for Football in Sweden. Sweden's home ground is Råsunda Stadium in Stockholms län and their head coach is Erik Hamrén. Sweden made their first...

 had been awarded for winning the gold medal at the 1948 Summer Olympics
Football at the 1948 Summer Olympics
The 1948 Olympic Games title was won by Sweden, managed by Englishman George Raynor.-Summary:Sweden, whose Football Association forbade professionalism within domestic football, ran out as winners and only used 12 players throughout the entire tournament but there were exceptional performances put...

 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. The trophy is named after Lennart Johansson
Lennart Johansson
Lennart Johansson was the president of UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations from 1990 until 2007. Johansson is probably most famous for starting the UEFA Champions League and for bringing the UEFA European Football Championship to his native Sweden.He started as a bandy leader in AIK...

, chairman of UEFA
UEFA
The Union of European Football Associations , almost always referred to by its acronym UEFA is the administrative and controlling body for European association football, futsal and beach soccer....

 between 1990 and 2007. The thought behind the trophy was to connect the biggest trophy a Swedish club could win with the biggest Swedish football leader.

Secret inscription controversy

In 2010 Dagens Nyheter
Dagens Nyheter
is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It has the largest circulation of Swedish morning newspapers, followed by Göteborgs-Posten and Svenska Dagbladet, and is the only morning newspaper that is distributed to subscribers across the whole country. In 2009 DN had a circulation of 316,000, reaching 881...

 wrote an article where goldsmith Peter Gustafsson told the newspaper that his old colleague Ingemar Eklund who made the trophy had engraved "Bajen Forever" on the inside of the trophy. "Bajen" is the nickname for the first holders of the trophy Hammarby IF
Hammarby IF
Hammarby Fotboll is a Swedish football club based in Johanneshov - just south of Södermalm, the southernmost district of Stockholm city centre...

. The Swedish football association went as far as to actually open the top of the trophy to make sure nothing subjective was engraved on the inside of the trophy. Instead of "Bajen Forever" the words "Djurgården är bäst!!" (literally "Djurgården are the best") were found on the inside of the trophy. The chairman of the football association later told the media that the engravings would be removed when the 2010
2010 Allsvenskan
- Overview :-League table:-Relegation play-offs:-----Results:...

 champions Malmö FF
Malmö FF
Malmö Fotbollförening, also known simply as Malmö FF, are a Swedish professional football club based in Malmö. The club is affiliated with Skånes Fotbollförbund and play their home games at Swedbank Stadion. The club colours, reflected in their crest and kit, are sky blue and white...

received their engravings on the outside of the trophy.
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