The Swedish footballer Kurt Hamrin, who has died aged 89, was a star of the 1958 World Cup when Sweden reached the final and was a major hit in the Italian league during the 1950s and 60s with Fiorentina and Milan, with whom he won major European honours.
The 1958 finals, played in Sweden, showed Hamrin at his dynamic best on the right wing. With a low centre of gravity, superb close control and great pace, he was a key figure in his country’s passage to the final. Sweden’s Yorkshire-born manager, George Raynor, characterised his players as “the slowest in the competition” but this could scarcely have applied to the fleet-footed Hamrin.
