26.9.2025
A small fishing village of 800 people, a 6,000 capacity Stadium and a football team coached by a school principal is currently shaking things up in the Swedish League.
The village beside the shore of the Baltic Sea, is on the verge of making a remarkable achievement in European football. And it is on course for the biggest points haul in the league’s 101-year history. Mjällby hold an eight-point lead with six rounds left in Sweden’s top league and have lost just one game this season.
“Make the impossible possible” is one of the mantras found on the walls and the PowerPoint slides at Mjällby. And that is exactly what is happening.
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.
This season, Mjällby 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 57 points is a record at this stage of a season and they need 11 more from their last six games to break Malmö’s league record of 67. AP
Mjallby’s Jeppe Kjaer Jensen drives the ball in their 1-0 home win over Halmstad last month.