Shashwat Rana, who plays for the successful Swedish football club Malmo, wants to play for the Nepali national team.
What you should know
Malmö is Sweden's most successful football club. It regularly plays in the European Champions League. After all, this is the club where Zlatan Ibrahimovic started playing.
He was born in Malmo city. This happened a long time ago. Now, a Nepali player is professionally associated with this club. He is Shashwat Rana.
It was only last November that Malmo announced the signing of this 18-year-old player Shashwat with great importance. Now, why is this Shashwat being talked about? He is currently in Kathmandu, for personal work. He is returning to Malmo soon. Due to his professional contract, he was not able to talk openly to the Nepali media. During the time he stayed in Kathmandu, he remained close to Nepali football and also met national team player Rohit Chand.
He wants to play for the Nepali national team. His passport is also Nepali. However, he was born in Denmark. His father, Vivek Rana, a former karate player, moved to Denmark two decades ago. He is now completely busy with his son's football career. The Rana family hopes and believes that one day Shashwat will play for a bigger club in Europe.
When other countries in South Asia have started giving foreign players of their origin the opportunity to play for the national team, there will be no more difficulty in playing Shashwat, who has Nepali citizenship. Matt Ross was in contact with him when he was the coach of the Nepali national team. There was a two-way conversation between them before the match against Malaysia, but it did not take a concrete shape.
Shashwat's biggest feature is that he can be associated with a professional club in Europe as a Nepali player. Moreover, Malmo is a big club in itself. For now, he is playing for Malmo's reserve team. The belief is that he will soon be able to enter the main team. For now, Malmo has signed a three-year contract with this left-back player.
At that time, the club's assistant sports director Ola Toivomäki said, 'Sashwat is an excellent player. He has a lot of potential. In the last two years, his performance as a defensive fullback has been high.' As a child, he joined Hellerup in Denmark at the age of seven. Later, Lumbi signed him. Due to his high performance, he reached FC Copenhagen at the age of 15.
Copenhagen is the most successful club in Denmark. After his high performance in the age group team there too, Sashwat Malmö made him their own. At the time of signing, he said, 'I am very happy to join a big club like Malmö. My game has also improved a lot since I came here. Now my eyes are on entering the senior team. I will have to improve my game accordingly.'
The 5-foot-11-inch tall Shashwat, who considers Lionel Messi his idol and plays like Brazilian player Marcelo on the field, has a dream of playing in the Premier League. That too for a club in the top four. Having said that, he still has a desire to play for the Nepali national team. Is the Nepali team itself ready to play for him?
