The 71-year-old Briton took over the coaching job last spring when the Skåne club was in crisis, and after a stressful season, HIF secured the contract in the super league in the last round.
Stuart Baxter then chose to move on and Klebér Saarenpää replaced him as head coach. A stressful six months with Helsingborg was over. But 2024 continued with worries. His granddaughter Xana – daughter of IFK Gothenburg’s goalkeeping coach Lee Baxter – suffered from acute leukemia at the beginning of the year, which The evening paper depicted.
Stuart Baxter walked around with an injured hip himself last year, and describes the last two months in HIF as painful for that reason. The hip was supposed to be operated on earlier, but it had to be postponed since he returned to the coaching profession.
– Immediately afterwards I took care of it, and for the last two months I have been fully active and doing what I usually do in the gym. There has been a time when I only took care of a broken hip, says Stuart Baxter to the Football Channel.
It sounds like you sacrificed a lot for HIF. Can you describe everyday life during that period?
– Everyday life was not easy. But I think the biggest struggle with HIF was probably mental. They had a group that was quite hurt after their relegation (from Allsvenskan 2022) and the start in the super league. When I went to work, I could take care of the physical part. I trained hard to keep the pain at arm’s length.
– But the mental part was: “If you don’t fix this now, Baxter, people will lose their jobs. There are 37 in HIF who will not continue”. The players are better than they had shown so I would cream a little more out of them. It was more the demands that I had on myself mentally. It didn’t get any easier with the physical part, but I’m used to fighting. I kind of think I’ve lived with it my whole career.
This year, the tone is completely different. Ahead of today’s meeting with Utsikten, Klebér Saarenpää’s crew has the opportunity to reach the promotion spot with five rounds remaining. They have worked methodically and only talked about one match at a time. The word promotion is not spoken, at least not outwardly.
– I think it’s fantastic to see and Klebér has done a very good job. I think we took step one last year during the recovery. “Micke” (Mikael Dahlberg, sporting manager), Fredrik Karlsson (chairman), the board and Klebér have been consistent, says Baxter and continues:
– And the players have lived without the knife to their throats. Halfway through the series, they’ve really picked up on it and now they feel like they can play out a little bit. It shows that they have made the right choice, that everyone there has done a good job.
If they reach the Allsvenskan, can you feel that you were part of and laid one of the building blocks to the success?
– I think everyone in HIF will slap me in the face if I start talking about Allsvenskan (laughs). They have tried to live in reality. The reality financially, really with signings – Micke Dahlberg and Klebér have been allowed to live in it. They have worked with their younger players and continued that journey. To now throw in “Oh, if we go to the Allsvenskan”… I think they want to keep it as low as possible.
– My role was to ensure that HIF had a continued upward trend. What they have done this year, they should have a lot of praise for, it is not my business. I helped the younger players a bit and gave them their debuts and such. We set some other game patterns that might have been a little helpful for Klebér, but he has done a top job himself.
Stuart Baxter is currently up for the coaching job in South African AmaZulu, which he talks about here.