How a tiny Swedish team achieved one of the biggest ever shocks in European soccer (football)

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/21/sport/soccer-mjallby-sweden-champion-intl


The Mjällby AIF squad celebrates after winning the Allsvenskan, the Swedish league title. Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/Reuters

In a small Swedish fishing village, there is a tiny soccer stadium tucked away beside a campsite and the shores of the Baltic Sea. It is the type of place where the land is so flat that the horizon sits just above the trees and the sky stretches so wide it seems possible to touch.

Here, in this unassuming spot, is where one of the greatest ever stories in European soccer unfolded this season. No one expected Mjällby AIF, a team that plays in a village of around 1,500 inhabitants, to contend for the Swedish league. After all, its budget is a fraction of some of Sweden’s biggest teams.

Yet somehow, on Monday, the team completed one of the sport’s biggest shocks and won the Allsvenskan – the top tier of Swedish soccer. “It’s 1,500 inhabitants in the village where they play, and you’re just flabbergasted when you see this elite football going on,” Erik Hadzic – a reporter for TV4 Fotbollskanalen, who has covered the team for the last five years – tells CNN Sports.



“Mjällby winning the Swedish championship is arguably the biggest sensation in the history of the Swedish league.” The tiny team from Hällevik has not just won the league, either. It has absolutely blown away the competition. Having lost just one game all season, it is currently 11 points ahead of nearest challenger Hammarby in second, and with its 2-0 win over IFK Göteborg, Mjällby assured the title with three games remaining.

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