IN a remote fishing village beside the shore of the Baltic Sea, one of the most remarkable achievements in European football is close to being realised.
“Make the impossible possible” is one of the mantras found on the walls and the PowerPoint slides at tiny Swedish club Mjallby.
And that’s exactly what is happening.
Mjallby hold a 14-point lead after their 2-0 win over Elfsborg on Oct 4 in Sweden’s top league, Allsvenskan, and have lost just one game this season.
Oh, and they are on course for the biggest points haul in the league’s 101-year history.
Not bad for a team made up of mostly locally born players who play home games in a village of around 800 inhabitants on Sweden’s south coast, whose coach is a school principal and scout is a postman.
“If we would be able to win the league, I cannot imagine anything has been close to this achievement,” said Mjallby chairman Magnus Emeus.
“The size of the club, our conditions, our financial muscle – to one year beat all the others, I think no one has been near this.”
Mjallby’s unlikely journey to the brink of what could be compared to Leicester’s unfathomable Premier League title in 2016 is a tale of hard work, common sense and bold data-driven decisions on and off the field at a club that’s the beating heart of a small, tight-knit community.
Emeus is biased, naturally, but he describes Mjallby’s 6,000-capacity Strandvallen home – located in the village of Hallevik – as “the nicest-situated football stadium in Sweden.”
“If you kick the ball really hard and far over the goal, it will not be far from the Baltic Sea,” Emeus said.
Such is its rural and isolated location that visiting teams might feel like they’re driving to the end of the world, Emeus said with a smile.
“They’re probably sick and tired of never ever getting to the stadium,” he said. “You drive and you drive and you drive and you drive, and then finally you either have to drive into the Baltic Sea or into the arena.”
Fishing has long been the predominant industry in this corner of the world, where there are also vast swathes of farmland and an entrepreneurial spirit helping to drive the local economy.
Founded in 1939, Mjallby have never won a major trophy and have typically played outside the top flight, flitting around the regional leagues.
A big turning point came in 2015 with the arrival of Emeus, a locally born businessman who had moved back to the region after working with companies across Europe.
He took up an offer of becoming chairman of Mjallby, who were in the second tier at the time and making year-on-year financial losses, and – in his words – “established a methodology I’d learned in business life.”
Strategic plans and ambitious targets were put in place off the field, while new coaches were hired and a commitment was made to lean on homegrown players who could be sold for a profit.
“Another mantra I talk about is, we need to be best on the things which are free,” Emeus said. “We can have a better team spirit than Real Madrid ... we can prepare better for a game than Manchester United.”
The unlikely rise to being title contenders has come in the last two years under coach Anders Torstensson, a former youth-team player at Mjallby who spent time in the military before returning to the area, becoming a teacher and occasionally helping out as the club’s short-term coach.
Torstensson was hired for the third time in 2023 and was soon joined by an assistant, Karl Marius Aksum, who has a PhD in Visual Perception in Elite Football but had never coached at senior level.
Mjallby’s leadership noticed that Aksum, a Norwegian, posted his tactical beliefs and principles to a large following on social media and felt he was the coach to help change a team known for being defensively minded to one which played a more expansive game.
This season, Mjallby have the best defensive record (17 goals conceded), the second most goals (44) and have lost just one of their 24 games. The team’s 63 points is a record at this stage of a season and they need 11 more to break Malmo’s league record of 67.
“It’s no surprise that we’re playing a good style of football,” The only team who can realistically stop Mjallby winning the title are Hammarby, who are in second place. Another Stockholm-based team, AIK, are a further 18 points adrift in third.
Mjallby have never been in this position. Their squad is full of unheralded players – though Axel Noren recently got a first call-up by Sweden’s national team and fellow defender Abdullah Iqbal is Pakistan’s captain – who need to handle increasing pressure.
For Aksum, Mjallby is still “far off from winning the league.”
That’s not stopping fans believing a dream could turn into a reality.
“We’re not here because of luck. We have belief, we have good people – players, coaches, employees – and I think we’re humble and have our own identity. That’s a great strength.” — AP
