Football (Soccer) Thread

[Josquius]

Wow, a town of 1200 won the league

Is the Swedish league that bad or some wacky stuff going on there?

The Swedish league is quite bad football wise. For reference GAIS and Mjällby have a budget of about 7 million euros, the bigger teams about 20-40 million. 2 or 3 times a decade a team qualifies for the Champions League. Last season one team went to the semi-finals of the conference league and lost to Chelsea. That's the first semi-final for a Swedish team in a European cup since 1987.

Mjällby have built up a very good scouting system and they have been able to build up a team, a bit under the radar, for a few years. They have an idea of the game and the player group understands it and follows it. They also have a core of very good local players. They are well worth the win and they earned it by themselves, not because of weakness in the other teams.

Mjällby is not in the Metro area of Stockholm. It is out of the way countryside with no big cities in reasonable distance. The stadium lies on a field, next to a camping site outside of Mjällby proper, 1200 inhabitants.

Those are higher budgets than Scotland manages generally. There it's 20-30 mil for rangers and celtic, 10 mil for hearts and Aberdeen, and 4 mil for everyone else.
How on earth does such a wee team manage such a budget? There a local millionaire owning them?
How come their players aren't poached away?

On Scotland, things are looking interesting there this year, with someone outside the old firm pulling ahead.