Alexander Isak has joined Newcastle for a club-record fee but anyone who believes the pressure that comes with a move of that magnitude may faze the 22-year-old should think again. Because if there is one thing Isak has been doing throughout his career it is breaking records.
In January 2017, on his second appearance for Sweden, he became his country’s youngest goalscorer at the age of 17. He took one touch with the outside of his right foot in the penalty area before a slightly scuffed shot with his left found its way past the Slovakia goalkeeper (a certain Martin Dubravka), beating a record that had stood for 105 years. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, as a comparison, scored his first international goal at the age of 20.
The year before, Isak had become AIK’s youngest goalscorer in a competitive game aged 16 years, five months and seven days. Soon after he was his club’s youngest goalscorer in the Swedish top flight and he celebrated his 17th birthday by scoring twice against arch-rivals Djurgården.
But despite having so much success so early Isak has remained incredibly humble and hard-working. His career has not been straightforward despite a move to Borussia Dortmund a few weeks after that first goal for Sweden. At Dortmund he became a victim of a power struggle between the then manager, Thomas Tuchel, and the board. The current Chelsea coach was not involved in the decision to sign Isak and gave him few chances. In fact, Isak played only four minutes for the German, in a cup game when Dortmund were 3-0 up.
Tuchel left that summer but Isak still struggled and it was not until after a move to Real Sociedad in the summer of 2019 that he got his breakthrough. He is not one to have regrets though and, asked in 2020 whether he was still happy with the decision to join Dortmund instead of Real Madrid, he said: “One hundred per cent. I have gone this way and now I am in a place where I feel good. It is impossible to know what would have happened if I had chosen another route; then maybe I would have been back in Sweden by now.”
His mental strength comes from early career setbacks. Having had it very easy as a young boy he suddenly struggled in his early teenage years at AIK. “Of course I have had tough periods before,” he told Aftonbladet in 2017. “I was dropped to the bench. They thought I didn’t work hard enough and they were right. I didn’t do what was needed to be in the team.
“But in the end I realised that I had to work really hard, just like the others. It was then that I realised that this was serious, you have to try really hard [to succeed]. So that’s when I sorted myself out.”
Isak grew up in Bagartorp just outside Stockholm, both his parents having moved from Eritrea (then under Ethiopian annexation) at the end of the 1980s. Isak started playing football at a place called simply “the pitch”, which was gravel to start with and later artificial turf. He played there in all of his free time, but did not neglect school, where he was described as “a model student” and excelled in sport.
“I have never had a student who has jumped 1.75m in high jump without ever training,” his PE teacher, Christer Corpi, told Expressen in 2021. “He absolutely destroyed everyone in table tennis as well.”
Another teacher, Ann-Cathrin Lif, says she does not remember anyone else who had so much time off to play football or train but her overall memory is of an extremely well-behaved and polite young person. “All the guys at ‘the pitch’ looked up to him, especially the younger ones. I noticed how respectful he was towards the younger players. A nice person, simply put. He was a negotiator if there was a conflict. He could get angry and irritated like everyone else but he had a calm aura.”
