Ballon d'Or nominee now looks completely unrecognisable after retiring at 28 to sell vacuum cleaners

A former Ballon d’Or nominee now looks very different 26 years on from retiring at just 28.

Modern-day football fans associate the Ballon d’Or with Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who won a combined 13 awards between 2008 and 2023.

But before their period of dominance, the award was received by several iconic stars such as Zinedine Zidane (1998), George Weah (1995), and Bulgaria and Barcelona star Hristo Stoichkov (1994).

Italians Roberto Baggio and Paolo Maldini finished in second and third in 1994, while Gheorghe Hagi and Swedish player Tomas Brolin finished joint fourth.

At the time, Brolin played for Serie A side Parma, with whom he won the Coppa Italia (1992), the European Cup Winners' Cup (1993), the UEFA Super Cup (1993), and the UEFA Cup (1995).

The Sweden international also created an iconic moment in the 1992 UEFA European Championship, scoring a decisive winner against England to hand the Swedes a 2-1 win in Stockholm.

Tomos Brolin in 1992 (Credit:Getty)

Brolin registered 30 goals and 16 assists during his five-year stay in Italy, which attracted the interest of Premier League outfit Leeds United.

The former forward then signed for the Yorkshire club in 1995.

But things did not go as well as he may have liked, and in the aftermath of a 5-0 defeat to Liverpool in January 1996, Leeds manager Howard Wilkinson and Brolin clashed over the player’s defensive abilities.

The Swede went on to make just 25 appearances for Leeds before loan spells at Zurich and former club Parma ensued.

Brolin signed for Crystal Palace in 1998, making 16 appearances for the Eagles before returning to his native Sweden, signing for Hudiksvalls FF that year.

And to the surprise of many, while still just 28, Brolin called time on his career before opting to invest in multiple business ventures, including a successful vacuum cleaner firm.

Tomas Brolin in 2025 (Credit:Tomos Brolin/IG)

During an interview with FourFourTwo in 2018, the Swede described how his firm “sell more than 130,000 each year”.

When asked about retiring at 28, he said: “At first it was fun to go to training every day with Crystal Palace, but by the end it wasn’t as fun any more. I wondered: ‘Shall I do this next season?’ I thought about it during the summer and decided to stop. It wasn’t because of injuries. If you want to continue playing at a high level, you’ve got to train every single day, but I wasn’t so keen to keep doing that.

“I had other projects in my head – when I stopped playing, an inventor came up to me with his new idea about vacuum cleaners, and I opened that company. If by the December of that year I’d wanted to play again, I would have come back. But that feeling never came, and now it’s 20 years ago. Everyone says 28 is young to retire, but it depends on what you’ve done in your 28 years as a footballer. I’d done quite a lot.”