From the provinces to the top: Mjällby AIF has crowned its football fairytale and won the Swedish championship for the first time.
The club from the small village, which according to the latest data has 1,379 inhabitants, won 2-0 (2-0) at IKF Göteborg on Monday evening and is unassailable at the top of the Swedish Allsvenskan with three match days before the end of the season. Jacob Bergström (21st) and Tom Pettersson (28th) scored in Gothenburg.
27 league games, 20 wins – Mjällby simply couldn’t be stopped
Mjällby plays its home games at the Strandvallen stadium in the town of Hällevik, which is only slightly larger. Last year Mjällby had already finished fifth, but this season the village team was unstoppable. It has won 20 of 27 games so far – and only suffered one defeat.
Torstensson and Aksum – an unusual coaching duo
Anders Torstensson, who has been working as a coach in Mjällby since January 2023, is considered the “father” of success. The Swede served in the military for ten years, then worked as a headmaster and finally as a coach at his former club Mjällby. In the summer of 2024, the 59-year-old was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. “Treatment is not necessary, so I carry on. There could have been 100 worse diagnoses,” says Torstensson.
Assistant coach Karl Marius Aksum also played an important role in winning the title. The 35-year-old has a doctorate on visual perception in football and is applying his knowledge in Mjällby. Aksum says: “Nobody in the world has studied the eye movements of footballers as intensively as I have. In modern football, it is crucial to collect information about your surroundings”.
Nine years ago Mjällby was almost relegated to the fourth division
Hard to believe: In 2016, Mjällby only saved themselves from relegation to the fourth division on the last match day. Then the slow rebuilding began – without an investor, mind you. Cohesion still plays a crucial role today; many players live together in a kind of student dormitory.
Cohesion still plays a crucial role today. “When we have nothing to do, we grill, cook together or hang out”said midfielder Elliot Stroud BBC. Cooking is unlikely to happen in the student dormitory today. But a master party like this can also strengthen solidarity. Even if they don’t seem to have a problem with this at Mjällby AIF.