Max, the scoring son of a world handball goalkeeper

It was not released on the field of play, yet, but last day, in Fuenlabrada, he made his debut in the Espanyol squad a youth squad with a pedigree. Yours is yet to be written. That of his father, at the top of elite sport. Max is a forward, and his first surname gives him away: Svensson. As Tomas Svensson, his father, who was not a forward but quite the opposite, a goalkeeper; and not football but handball.

Double world champion (1990 and 1999) and European (1994 and 2000) with Sweden, triple Olympic medalist (silver at the Barcelona, ​​Atlanta and Sydney Games) and winner of six Champions, Tomas's footprint on Max is indelible, not only because of his genes or the advice he can give him about top competition, but also because of the suitcases that the young Espanyol B attacker, who had just turned 19, had to do as a result of his father's career. He was only six months old when the goalkeeper left Barcelona to join Hamburg. Little Max even spoke German.

Later, Tomas signed for Portland San Antonio, which corresponded to four years in Pamplona, ​​and then another three in Valladolid. It was in 2012 when the Svensson Río decided that the father would follow his route around the world – he had just signed for the German Rhein-Neckar Löwen – while the mother and the children, who were already three, would settle in Barcelona.

And there, after a step through the FCB Escola, is where young Max began to emerge, first in the Gavà, later in the Cornellà and from summer 2018, in a Espanyol to which he arrived as a first-year Youth and in which, in two seasons, he scored 19 official goals before uploading this same campaign to the José Aurelio Gay subsidiary. Five goals in the preseason, plus another two in the second day of Segunda B against Andorra, they endorse their first call-up with Vicente Moreno's team.

Since he did not play at the Fernando Torres stadium, Gay quickly recruited him for Sunday. Max got off the plane on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday at noon he was the starter at Espanyol-Lleida. It sure wasn't inconvenient for a globetrotter like him. And most likely Tomas, on Magdeburg's coaching staff since 2014, followed him with as much pride as when he stopped a decisive seven-meter throw in his stratospheric career.