A TINY fishing village, a former school headteacher with cancer and one match from bankruptcy.
Mjallby’s Swedish league title victory is, quite simply, one of football’s greatest stories.
The club secured their maiden Allsvenskan crown on Monday night thanks to a 2-0 win away at Goteborg.
They now have three matches left to pick up two more points and break the division’s record points tally of 67.
Not bad for a village with population of 1,485, more than six hours’ drive from Stockholm on Sweden’s south coast – where locals are rejoicing in their biggest catch of all.
Mjallby are based in Hallevik and confirmation of their success ensures they become the smallest place to win a major Uefa league title.
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They will likely need to go through three rounds of Champions League qualifying next summer.
Navigate those successfully and Hallevik would become the smallest place to feature in the group or league phase of Europe’s top-table competition, a tenth of the size of current record holders Unirea Urziceni from Romania.
And rest assured, their Strandvallen stadium – literally metres from the Baltic Sea and home since 1939 – has been packed out all season long, despite the 6,500 capacity being more than FOUR times bigger than the population.
But the 2025 glory – the Swedish league season runs from March to November – is a far cry from the struggles of just nine years ago.
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Mjallby won on the final day of the 2016 season to avoid relegation into the fourth tier which would almost certainly have seen them go bust.
That 3-0 victory over Prespa Birlik, somewhat ironically, came just months after Leicester City clinched the Premier League crown under Claudio Ranieri – with Mjallby’s title reminiscent of the Dilly-Ding Dilly-Dong 5,000-1 Foxes.
But while on these shores, clubs like Wrexham have bankrolled themselves up through the divisions at breakneck speed, Swedish football does not allow such loopholes.
The 50+1 model, also adopted in Germany, means fans own more than half of their football club – blocking mega-rich financers from ‘buying’ success.
And that makes Mjallby’s recovery and rise all the more impressive, with back-to-back promotions in 2018 and 2019 seeing them work their way into the top flight.
They have established themselves steadily in recent years and finished fifth last season.
This year, though, the team with an average of just 24 have won 20 of 27 league matches, losing once and doing the double over second-placed Hammarby, and are unbeaten at home for 22 games.
That is despite having a budget a fraction of the size of the big hitters like Hammarby, Malmo, AIK and Djurgarden.
The board have worked extremely hard to grow the club – and have done a phenomenal job – but even still, the annual turnover stands at £2.3million.
We have barbecues and hang out… those bonds build off the pitch and follow on the pitch
Elliot Stroud
What Mjallby have, though, money cannot buy.
A neighbouring caravan park keeps them grounded.
An apartment block where many of the players live keeps them united.
A grocery shop where they bump into fans keeps them in touch.
A sporting director who has survived both a brain tumour and prostate cancer keeps them motivated.
And an ill manager keeps them dreaming.
Anders Torstensson is synonymous with Mjallby.
The 59-year-old was a youth player for the club but despite breaking into the first-team squad in 1985, he did not make an appearance.
In the 40 years since, a decade was spent in the military and he then worked as a school headteacher while balancing his various coaching gigs.
He returned for his third stint as gaffer in 2023 and brought in Karl Marius Aksum as assistant in January 2024 – the same year Torstensson was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
Aksum did not have any senior coaching experience.
But he brought something very different to the table and to training sessions: a PhD in visual perception in elite football, focused on the art of scanning and rapid head movements for players to know their surroundings.
Defender Tom Pettersson referenced a “no egos but lots of fun” ethos in the dressing room while chief executive Jacob Lennartsson said: “For every Swedish krona that leaves this club, we ask the question: Is this making us better?’”
Evidently, it all combines to make a winning formula.
Reflecting on the magnitude of the Allsvenskan win, top-scorer Elliot Stroud, 23, told the BBC: “It’s difficult to take it all in, it’s happened so fast.
“If we don’t have anything to do, we will have a barbecue, cook out, hang out.
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“Those bonds build off the pitch and follow on the pitch too. That’s the key. We are all so close and that’s special at a fairly small club.”
And that special bond at a special club has truly produced something very special indeed.
