Club from remote fishing village of 800 people on verge of Swedish football ‘fairy tale’
With six rounds left in league, Mjällby hold eight-point lead – not bad for a team of mostly local players whose coach is a school principal
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 Mjällby. And that is exactly what is happening.
Mjällby hold an eight-point lead with six rounds left in Sweden’s top league, Allsvenskan, and have lost just one game this season. Oh, and it is 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 whose scout is a postman. Just nine years ago, the club was one game away from dropping into the country’s fourth tier.
“If we would be able to win the league, I cannot imagine anything has been close to this achievement,” Mjällby chairman Magnus Emeus said. “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.”
Mjällby’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 is the beating heart of a small, tight-knit community.