A late breakthrough.
You can safely say that Brommapojkarna’s striker Nikola Vasic has had. After many years in lower divisions, with games in, among other places, Akropolis and Vasalund, he is today the season’s most dangerous player in the Allsvenskan.
17 goals in 28 games means he leads the series’ scoring league (Malmö FF’s Isaac Kiese Thelin is second with 15 goals), with two games left in the season.
– I just did my thing and didn’t think too much about it. But the closer you get to the end, the more you think about it, he says.
Skull Nikola Vasic winning this year’s shooting league would mean more than just honor and a golden boot. DN has dug into the archives and concluded that the 33-year-old could become the oldest top scorer in Allsvenskan’s hundred-year history.
Vasic is surprised when he hears about the record he can break.
– Ah, huh? Damn that’s crazy! I had no idea about that. Then I’ll just have to go and beat that record, haha.
Facts. Allsvenskan’s oldest shooting kings
1. Paulinho, 32 years old (2018, BK Häcken).
2. Isaac Kiese Thelin, 31 years (2023, Malmö FF), Thomas Ahlström, 31 years old (1983, IF Elfsborg), Albert Olsson, 31 years old (1926-27, Application).
3. Billy Ohlsson, 30 years (1984, Hammarby IF), Dan Sahlin, 30 years old (1997, Örebro SK), Erik Persson, 30 years old (1938-39, AIK).
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What does it say about your career?
– I have had many years in slightly lower divisions where I have done well and scored many goals. It has taken time to get up here, he says and continues:
– And that’s probably what’s a bit sad, because you may not have as many years left as you feel you would have liked.
Nikola Vasic has a unique football career behind him. It was only in 2020 that he really started to bet on elite football, when his Akropolis made the step up to the super league. He then took a leave of absence from his full-time job as an electrician in order to focus wholeheartedly on football.
He was then 29 years old.
– It was probably also there somewhere that things turned around. You get more time for sleep, more time to think about diet, more time for extra training. You don’t have that if you work nine hours a day and then come home and are completely exhausted.
Nikola Vasic in Akropolis in the 2020 season (in the super league). Photo: Andreas L Eriksson/Bildbyrån
After that it was off to Italy and a shorter adventure in the Serie B club Reggina, which was not very successful. In 2021 he returned home to Vasalund and since 2022 he has belonged to the Brommapojkarna, where this year he is doing his second Allsvenskan season with the club.
And now he is scoring goals for the club, which is in tenth place in the Allsvenskan.
What has gone wrong this season?
– It’s hard to put your finger on. As a striker, it’s a bit like that when you score a goal, it’s like a snowball effect, that you keep scoring goals. Then it’s just been on that track for a while now.
But to go from electrician to potential Allsvenskan top scorer in just a few years… Could you have imagined that?
– No, not to lead the shooting league… Now we have to make sure to get it home as well.
After this season, the striker’s contract with Brommapojkarna expires. And there is one specific club that can clearly be linked to the 33-year-old.
Nikola Vasic has expressed in previous interviews that it had been “a childhood dream” to play for Hammarby.
Nikola Vasic grew up in Södermalm and has previously said that Hammarby is “his club”. When BP faced Bajen in August, Vasic scored two goals – but he chose not to celebrate either of them. Photo: Jesper Zerman/Bildbyrån
Have you had contact with Hammarby during the autumn?
– No, my agent and they have a dialogue. But it is not more than that. Of course, there has been some talk and such, but there is nothing concrete from them yet. We are in no hurry. We’ll see what happens after the season.
Do you have dreams of moving abroad?
– No.
There will be games in Sweden, then?
– I have no dreams of playing abroad. But you never know, sometimes there can be completely sick offers. That’s why I’m laying low and feel like I don’t want to focus on it right now.
– Right now there is nothing concrete with any club, concludes Vasic.
Facts. Nikola Vasic’s career
2016–2020: Akropolis – division one, super one (70 games, 44 goals).
2020–2021: Reggina – Serie B (8 matches, 0 goals).
2021–2022: Vasalund, loan – super league (27 matches, 9 goals).
2022–: The Brommapojkarna – super league, Allsvenskan (91 matches, 39 goals).
Source: Transfermarkt.
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