Smart thinking has Mjallby on the verge of Swedish title

STOCKHOLM - Swedish minnows Mjallby are on the brink of one of the greatest upsets in the country’s soccer history, set to clinch the top-flight title this weekend after a season built on academic-inspired playing principles used to outwit richer rivals.

Mjallby are 11 points clear of second-placed Hammarby from Stockholm in the Allsvenskan with five games left to play, and a win at home to Elfsborg on Saturday would leave Hammarby needing to beat a resurgent IFK Gothenburg on Sunday to keep the title race alive. 

The tiny village of Hallevik where the team plays its home games has a population of less than 1000 people, but the club's Strandvallen ground is capable of taking in more than six times that number as fans from all over the county of Blekinge stream there to watch them. 

It's certainly not easy for a club of Mjallby's size to compete with the likes of Hammarby and Malmo, with the latter having several years of money from playing in the group stages of European competitions to spend. 

"I think we have the 11th or 12th-highest wage budget in the league. We don't have the big wages, we can't pay a lot of money for transfer fees, so you have to work with what you've got," assistant coach Karl Marius Aksum, who holds a doctorate from the Norwegian School of Sports Science in Oslo, told Reuters. 

The Norwegian-born coach says the club scouts from the lower levels in Scandinavia, looking for diamonds in the rough that can be polished into top-class players, and what they lack in financial muscle is more than made up for by their tactical and academic approach to the game.

Aksum gained his doctorate by studying visual perception in elite football, and his research into the game led to him writing a 500-page document that has become the club's footballing bible as they dispensed with patterns of play and started focusing on principles instead. 

GAME-LIKE SITUATIONS

"We create guidelines, and then hopefully we work on them enough in game-like situations that we can play fluid football the way we want to. But I would say, to explain it very simply,  that we like control better than chaos."

Instilling these principles has given Mjallby a defined way of playing that their opponents have yet to crack.

Under head coach Anders Torstensson, the 17 goals they have conceded in their 25 games are the fewest in the league, and they are often at their best when the chips are down. 

"We are very, very good when the game is a draw or if the other team is leading," Aksum says. "It's not about getting the first goal, it's not about not conceding the first goal. It's about getting the game where we want it. So not chaos, but control, and we take control of the ball."

Referred to as "Doctor Football" by some Swedish media, Aksum says he is foremost a players' coach and that his ambition is to reach the top of the European game.

"I have a PhD, I have a masters, and of course, I am able to think critically about everything I read and everything I hear, because I have that background," he says. 

"But for me, my strength is what I do on the pitch with the players, that's my biggest strength. Everybody talks about me as the 'football doctor' and things like that, but for me, my strength is on the pitch." REUTERS