Varli: The next floorball Zlatan

Sweden’s national football team will have to find a new future without Zlatan Ibrahimovic but in the big picture he was only the beginning. The next Swedish Zlatan plays floorball, has her roots in Syria and her name is Ranja Varli.

At the age of 17, Ranja Varli was known as Huddinge IK’s wonderkid whom her teammates called “Zlatan”. A fitting name most of all because her exceptional skill and ability to make unexpected moves with the ball, but she and Zlatan Ibrahimovic also share an immigrant background.

_{Ranja Varli is a symbol of integration in Swedish floorball.
(Photo Erwin Keller)}

As Sweden is working hard to integrate everybody regardless of roots or gender also in floorball, Ranja Varli has been noted as an example how all Swedes can be an asset in elite sports. In an interview for the Swedish floorball Federation, she expressed how it is not quite simple for an immigrant girl to take up a game like floorball. In many cultures, football and even basketball are more easily accepted and seen as sports that can give a young talent a career and even a living but an exotic Swedish game like floorball takes some time to reach the same status with in the eyes of well-meaning immigrant parents.

Top player with no team
For many years now, Ranja Varli’s name has been mentioned frequently in Swedish floorball as one of the most promising players for the future. The product of Telge SIBK has played for Huddinge and Djurgården at national elite level and the highest point of her career this far has been the women’s final in Stockholm Globen in 2014. Varli’s overtime scoring secured Djurgården the Swedish title.

Unluckily for her and the club, Djurgården’s economic problems led to the women’s team being laid down and during the season Varli stayed away from certain January games due to the club not having kept its part of her contract.Not surprisingly, Varli was one of the hottest names for top teams looking for quality players.

_{After leaving Djurgården, Ranja Varli is showing her skills in the jersey of Täby.}

A scoring machine
In the end it was Täby that draw the longest straw. They would not be disappointed. Ranja Varli kept on scoring and finished fourth in the regular season scoring league with her 29 goals and 27 assists in 26 games. Only Anna Wijk, Emelie Wibron and Anna Jakobsson got more. One of Ranja Varli’s special nights happened in February as she brought her Täby from the verge of defeat to a 4-4 tie away against Endre scoring a hattrick in merely 82 seconds.

In the play-offs, Ranja Varli and her Täby forced the mighty KAIS Mora into full five games in the 1/4-finals. Unluckily, Varli drew a major knee injury in the third game and had to be carried off. Her team still fought a gallant overtime victory in the fourth game without her but was defeated in the fifth by 3-2. It is easy to imagine having their best goalscorer have turned the tables had she been able to play.

_{Ranja Varli is with patience waiting for her national team breakthrough.}

Best player despite the disappointment
In the national team, it is still all in the future for Ranja Varli. She was a member of the team that lost the U19 WFC title against Switzerland in Wolsztyn, Poland in 2008 and in the women’s national team she is only just making her breakthrough. In November last year, she seemed to be one of the leading players in the pre-WFC EFT tournament in Tampere but surprisingly, her name was not in the final list.

Ranja Varli did not hide her disappointment but never let it affect her performance in the Swedish Women’s Superleague. Her superb season for Täby won her the stipendium as the best floorball player of the season in the Stockholm district. One of the explicit arguments by the election board was her being able to play even better after having missed Sweden’s victorious WFC in Tampere. With a player like Anna Jakobsson retiring, it is obvious Sweden will have use for the new Zlatan to keep on winning.