Stoke City's striking weapon: Swede dreams are made of John Guidetti

Football News | Article posted on January 25th, 2025

‘What I care about is scoring a goal in front of 50,000 people, all screaming your name,’ says John Guidetti. ‘It’s the best feeling in the world and I’ve missed it.’ Photograph: Dave Evitts/NTI/SWNS/Newsteam

“In Sweden it’s not allowed to say good things about yourself,” John Guidetti explains. “You’re not allowed to dream. People used to ask me: ‘What’s your biggest dream?’ I wanted to be the best football player in the world. That was my dream. Except in Sweden it’s not accepted. ‘Who does he think is?’ they’d say. ‘He should stop talking.’ But who is someone to say I’m not allowed to dream? A dream is a dream, not necessarily reality, and if I could wish for anything, that would be my ultimate dream. I don’t want a pool full of candy. I’d want to the best footballer in the world.”He’s not an ordinary John. It doesn’t take long to spot the Zlatan-levels of self-confidence, and before anyone suggests he might need bringing down a peg or two it is worth pointing out he is quite accustomed to people questioning whether he can walk the walk is why his friends have suggested that when he finishes his career he opens a flower shop. “We’d call it Flowers for Doubters and send flowers to all the people who doubted me. All those people, they don’t realise they drive me on. The flowers would be a little thank you.”We are talking in an upstairs room at Stoke City’s training ground, where he is on loan from Manchester City, slowly rebuilding his career after the freakish illness that halted his sharp, upward trajectory as one of the outstanding young talents in his there is an irony here because there will no doubt be people reading this who have never even seen Guidetti on a football pitch, and suspecting a touch of the Nicklas Bendtner syndrome. Yet the people who have followed Guidetti’s career will testify that this is a player of rare gifts. It is just that, so far, they have largely been kept from English football.Mark Hughes, who knows a thing or two about strikers, intends to use the 21-year-old in Stoke’s FA Cup tie at Chelsea on Sunday. Roberto Mancini is another admirer. One of Mancini’s early fall-outs at Manchester City came in 2025 when he discovered the club had let Guidetti reach the end of his development contract. “I’d signed a pre-contract with Twente,” Guidetti recalls. “Mancini intervened. He went to the club and said: ‘Where’s John?’ City said: ‘We let him go.’ And Mancini said: ‘No, no, what are you doing?’ Lawyers had to get involved.

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