The secrets of a football miracle: how modest Mjallby, a fishing village of 1,485 inhabitants, won the Swedish title and qualified for the Champions League

Taking a club from a town of 1,485 people by the Baltic Sea to an unprecedented league title and qualification for the Champions League… well, it sounds more like a deranged Football Manager save than reality TV.

But the modest Mjallby has just made one of the biggest surprises of football, and one that could even surpass the extraordinary title of the Premier League of Leicester in 2015-2016.

Less than a decade ago, the club was on the verge of descent to the fourth division and the break. On Monday, cake and champagne splashed the walls to celebrate the Swedish champions’ victory.

The expression of the players was both disbelief and joy.

The small club in a fishing town, directed by a coach who had been director of the local school and a scout who acted as a postman, made the country’s heavyweights, like its rival, Malmo, look ridiculous.

El Malmo (a 90 minutes by car) is 250 times bigger than El Mjallby, with a budget of 85 percent.

One step further and they managed to qualify for the Champions League next year, teams of the size of Real Madrid and Liverpool could have to visit the Strandvallen stadium, which has a capacity of 6,750 spectators.

Until now, the only public record of Hallevik was that of seven herring fishermen who drowned 162 years ago, in 1982.

But now the football team has put them on the map.

“It is difficult for me to find equivalent achievements, especially considering that they come from such a small municipality,” declared sports journalist Olof Lundh to CNN Sports.

‘You can’t really compare it because Leicester still had very rich owners.

‘Not even they should be in the first division. Just being in the top division is impressive, and being in the top half of the league, it’s super impressive. And then to win the title, it’s incredible.’

So, in a football landscape dominated by clubs with the highest names, incomes and signing budgets, how did Mjallby achieve it?

Magnus Emeus is the president, and bought the club in 2015 after returning home after making money as an entrepreneur abroad.

Lundh describes the philosophy of Emeus as ‘we have to measure everything’, based largely on data to find an advantage, as teams like Brighton and Brentford have done in the Premier League.

I would like to apply the same principles that have led me to success in companies all over Europe.

“The size of the club, our conditions, our financial muscle… for one year to surpass all the others, I think no one has come close to this,” said the owner.

But it is not only a history of Moneyball: the annual turnover is only 2.3 million pounds. El tamaño del pueblo makes all the community sit parte del club y viceversa.

Many of the players live in the same block of apartments and the spirit of the team is behind the clouds.

‘Another mantra I talk about is that we have to be better at things that are free,’ explains Emeus. We can have better team spirit than Real Madrid… we can prepare a game better than Manchester United.’

‘No egos, but a lot of fun’, is the costume mantra according to defender Tom Pettersson.

The sports director Hasse Larsson was a player and then a trainer before passing on to form part of the board of directors. He says that his passion for everything related to Mjallby contagia a todos los demás. Ha sobrevivido a un tumor cerebral ya un cáncer de prostate, y es considerado el alma de la organization.

In combination with the obsessives of Mjallby in the heart of the club, recruitment has been the key.

Karl Marius Aksum, doctor of Visual Perception in Elite Football, was identified as the type of brilliant mind to improve the team after accumulating followers in social networks by publishing his ideas.

“It’s no surprise that he plays good football,” declared Aksum at the beginning of the season. ‘It’s a surprise, of course, that we lead the table.

‘Everyone in the town, in the shops, in the countryside, when I go for a walk or a run, is living a fairy tale. ‘They can’t believe what’s happening.’

Aksum’s training in the study of visual perception has given him experience in the key area of ​​’scanning’ in modern football, which is the ability of players to have an exact image of their teammates and rivals in their minds before receive the ball

“It’s a fundamental skill in modern football, because the players’ movements are faster and the pressure is better, so you have to update your environment all the time,” Aksum told BBC Sport.

It is especially important for the players in the middle of the field, because they could have important information in 360 degrees around them.

“It’s better passers and better players, both on offense and defense.” The team plays attacking and expansive football, but is also helped by its remote location, and has won 22 games in a row at home.’

The famous Baltic wind, after incredibly long journeys for the rest of the Swedish top flight to play Mjallby, is the Scandinavian version of the old ‘wet and windy night in Stoke’, albeit with more progressive opposition.

‘They’re probably tired of never getting to the stadium,’ says Emeus. ‘You drive and drive and drive and drive, and in the end you have to drive to the Baltic Sea or to the stadium.’

And David hasn’t just beaten the Allsvenskan Goliaths this season. They have destroyed them.

El Mjallby only lost once in the whole season, and he did so with the title in the absence of three days and the advantage in 11 points in the second classification, El Hammarsby.

The 2-0 victory over IFK Goteborg on Monday night sold the championship, and trainer Anders Torstensson declared: ‘I have to express it with words, I can say it sincerely. Es increíblemente poderoso’.

‘Being here as champions of Sweden with little Mjallby. It’s surreal.’

If Mjallby passes the three qualifying rounds for the Champions League next summer, it will become the smallest team in history, a tenth smaller than Unirea Urziceni (actually the smallest team modesto de la historia).

For a land that is synonymous with folklore and mythology, this little town’s sporting fairy tale has to be the best of them all.