Mjällby AIF (World Soccer)

Photo credit: Alamy Huge win…

Mjallby players celebrate beating Malmo

The unlikely village team mounting a shock title challenge and taking Swedish football by storm

“When teams come here on the bus they keep driving and then, 

when they can’t drive any further, they find our stadium”

Jamie Evans

1 Sep 2025 World Soccer

Based in a village of fewer than 1,500 inhabitants, and having almost gone out of business as a third-tier club just seven years ago, the fact that Mjällby exist at all is an impressive feat. That they play in the Allsvenskan, the highest level of Swedish football, is even more remarkable; that they’re on track to lift their first-ever league title is a borderline miracle.

On August 9, they visited the home of reigning champions Malmö and secured a 3-1 win to maintain a four-point lead at the top of the table.

Malmö were runaway winners in 2024, claiming their fourth title in five years and a record-extending 27th overall, but this result left them in fifth place, 13 points off top spot.

Mjällby undoubtedly benefitted from the kind of fortune that teams on a good run of form tend to get. Herman Johansson opened the scoring with a heavily deflected strike, Elliot Stroud added a second with a shot that should have been saved by Malmö’s Robin Olsen (the veteran Sweden goalkeeper who recently re-joined his hometown club from Aston Villa), while the third goal by Viktor Gustafson was the result of some disastrous hesitation in the champions’ defence.

Yet they also defended with determination and organisation, resisted waves of attacks and frustrated their more decorated opponents. It was their fifth win in a row and 11th game unbeaten.

Keeping pace in second place is Hammarby, last year’s runners-up but a club with only one league title to their name (back in 2001). Still, they have the advantage of being based in Stockholm. Meanwhile, a six-hour drive south of the capital city lies Mjällby.

The club itself plays its home games five minutes further down the road in the seaside village of Hallevik, a settlement with a population of 1,485. The club’s picturesque Strandvallen stadium seats 6,750, drawing in fans from all over the surrounding villages within the remote municipality of Solvesborg. As the crow flies, it is actually closer to Denmark, Poland and Germany than it is to Stockholm. As sporting director Hasse Larsson told The Guardian: “When teams come here on the bus they drive and drive, through the farms, past the fishing harbours.

They keep driving and then, when they can’t drive any further, they find our stadium.”

That remoteness has probably aided them – at the end of May they marked a year without a home league defeat – as has the steady hand of Larsson, chairman Magnus Emeus and manager Anders Torstensson.

Under their guidance, the club has become a slick operation both on and off the pitch, topping the table with one of the smallest budgets in the league and an average attendance of just 4,826.

Stroud, signed from third-tier Oddevold in 2023, is one of several smart recruits. The 23-year-old’s goal against Malmo was his sixth of the campaign, making him the club’s joint-top scorer this season alongside 20-year-old Gambian forward Abdoulie Manneh who arrived from Wallidan in his home country last year. At the back, Danish-born defender Abdullah Iqbal has 16 caps for Pakistan.

Having already played (and beaten) Hammarby twice, the rest of Mjällby’s campaign is simply about remaining consistent until the season ends in November. If they can do that, they will be one of the smallest national champions in European history.