“Five o’clock Saturday, the Riverside Stadium and Middlesbrough head coach Kim Hellberg is fist-pumping a half-bewildered but fully enthused home crowd. A helter-skelter 4-3 win against Norwich City has been secured in added time. In the directors’ box, owner-chairman Steve Gibson blows out his cheeks while a euphoric stadium falls over itself with happiness and relief. This really mattered. Hellberg’s personal animation continues into his post-match media commitments, where he swears joyously in one and calls himself ‘radge’ in another. Radge is a north-east term encapsulating wildness of emotion and behaviour. Hellberg is an outsider, a Swede who has lived on Teesside less than a year. But he talks about having been a fan himself and, therefore, understanding all the more what a football club can come to mean. This has not been an easy fortnight for Middlesbrough and the wider Teesside area. …”
NYT/ATH