After three years of failing to usurp København in Denmark, Trebor Mahtal stepped down as manager of FC Midtjylland and went back on the hunt for a new opportunity on his EuroTrip.
Upon resigning, there weren’t too many interesting jobs available, but he did put his name in the hat for the vacancies at Swedish sides Djurgårdens and Malmö then Czech club Slavia Praha. Both Swedish sides came in with offers but it looked like Malmö had financial issues despite being league favourites, so Mahtal delayed for a week. Slavia took too long so Mahtal decided it was time to head back to Sweden 15 years after departing his first club VMA IK.
Who Are Djurgårdens IF?
Djurgårdens IF Fotbollsförening, known to locals as Djurgår’n, is a professional club based on the Swedish island of Djurgården or Kungliga Djurgården (The Royal Park) in central Stockholm. The island is one of Sweden’s most popular tourist areas, and is home to historical buildings, monuments, museums including the Nordic Museum and ABBA: The Museum, galleries, the amusement park Gröna Lund, docks, the small residential area Djurgårdsstaden, and large forest and meadow areas.
Djurgårdens IF was founded on 12 March 1891 at a café on Djurgården by members of the island’s dockyard industry. It originally focused largely on athletics and winter sports with the football team not formed until 1899. It won four titles between 1924 and 1944 and has gone on to win 13 Swedish titles, including one in this save back in 2029. The club has fierce local rivalries with AIK and Hammarby, with whom it plays the Tvilling Derby and Stockholms Derby. It also has fierce competitive rivalries with IFK Göteborg and the team Mahtal just rejected Malmö, plus other competitive rivalries with Helsingborgs, Elfsborg and Norrköping.
The move to Sweden sees Mahtal return to a summer football league. He takes control after 12 games of the 30-game Allsvenskan Unibet season with Djurgardens lingering in 11th with just 14 points despite being predicted to finish 3rd. However, they’re only 6 points off the top four. The club plays at the 32,000-capacity Tele2 Arena and has fairly average facilities of 15 youth recruitment, 14 junior coaching, 12 training facilities and 11 youth facilities. It has a bank balance of £3.8m, transfer budget of £3.3m and weekly wage budget of £153k, of which £29k is spare.
The best player at the club are centre backs Mirza Kahrimanovic and Alexander Mörfelt along with homegrown attacker Johan Norén, winger Bjørnar Halvorsen and midfielder Mario Ndoj. There was a real lack of youth in the first team but a few decent prospects in the youth sides led by striker Daniel Traoré. The club also had a mass of deadwood, so Mahtal wasted no time selling 12 players for a £6m profit.
Mahtal went with an asymmetric 4-2-3-1 approach that saw youngster Malte Üre step in as the holding midfielder and Norén largely used as a striker.
Getting Started In Sweden
Mahtal’s reign began fairly well, with Halvorsen earning a 1-1 at 4th-place Nörrkoping then went one better at Göteborg as midfielder Mohamed Hassan Fofana scored the only goal. Mahtal’s first home game saw another pretty uneventful game as Norén’s first-half strike edged a 1-0 win over next-to-bottom AIK. But they kicked on a level as Halvorsen and Norén braces secured a 5-1 thumping of Helsingborgs. And 4-1 and 2-0 wins over strugglers Östers and Brommapojkarna lifted them into the top four.
The strong start continued with a 0-0 at Hamlstads and 3-0 win over Landskrona, earning Mahtal the August manager of the month award. The unbeaten start stretched to 10 games as Norén’s hat trick earned a 3-0 win at Häcken and continued through a trickier run as Halvorsen got the only goal at home to 3rd-place Västerås and an own goal gave them another 1-0 over Kalmar, taking them four points behind surprise leaders Elfsborg.
Managing League With European Qualification
Mahtal’s early days at the club also saw them enter the Europa Conference League qualifiers, easing through 6-0 on aggregate against Sarajevo, 5-1 against Zaglebie Lupin and 4-1 against Lommel to reach the league phase. The league phase began with a solid 1-0 win at Bosnia side Zeljeznicar through Lolos before Halvordsen scored the only goal at home to Slovan Liberec. Those wins were good, but they hit new levels with Halvorsen’s brace securing a 2-0 win at home to Atalanta. The final three games took place after the Swedish league finished and they lost 3-1 at home to former Danish rivals Randers but beat Breidablik 4-2 and finished with a 2-0 loss at league winners Molde. That wrapped up a 13th-place finish, which would likely mean an early return from the winter break.
Creeping Into A Title Race
Djurgården stayed four points back as right winger Militiadis Lolos and midfielder Thomas Papamichail earned a 2-2 at Elfsborg. Norén scored twice in a wild 3-3 at Malmö, which left Djurgårdens in the midst of what was technically a seven-way title race. They trailed Elfsborg by 3 points, as did Hammarby who had two games in hand on both their rivals, while the top seven were separated by 9 points.
Game 1: IK Sirius (6th, home): The run-in began against another potential title winner and goals by Ndoj and Amer Johansson nicked a 2-1 success. Elfsborg lost 1-0 at Kalmar and Hammarby lost 4-1 at Häcken but won a game in hand to take Djurgårdens top of the league for the first time.
Game 2: Hammarby (2nd, away): Another potentially tricky game could easily be a title decider between the two Stockholm rivals. But Djurgårdens finally suffered their under Mahtal as they fell to a 3-0 defeat that took Hammarby top. Hammarby also won their other game in hand to go 6 points clear with three games remaining.
Game 3: Göteborg (8th, home): They got back on track as Kahrimanovic’s header and Norén earned a 2-0 win. Hammarby won 2-1 at Kalmar to stay 6 points clear. While Malmö had appeared from nowhere to leapfrog Djurgårdens into 2nd.
Game 4: AIK (14th, away): Struggling AIK were dismissed 5-1 led by Halvorsen’s brace. But Hammarby beat Elfsborg 2-0 to win their third title in four years and sixth in total, five of which have been during this save.
Game 5 – Nörkopping (4th, away): 2nd place was on the line as Malmö led Djurgården on goal difference. But strangely, Malmö played the day before and won 3-1 leaving Djurgårdens needing a five-goal victory. But they could only draw 2-2 despite Norén’s double.
Djurgårdens finished in 3rd place on 55 points after 15 wins, 7 draws and 7 defeats. But under Mahtal’s reign, they took 41 points from 16 games and only lost once, which was very much title-winning form. Key to that were Norén, who was the league’s top scorer with 17 in 27 with Halvorsen in joint-second on 14 goals, Ndoj leading the league with 10 assists, and Halvorsen getting a league-high six player of the match awards.
Plenty To Be Optimistic About In Sweden
Mahtal was very happy with his first few months in Sweden, which were far more positive than the final few in Denmark. Norén led the way with 24 goals in 41 games followed by Halvorsen (21) and Lolos (12) while Ndoj was by far the leading creative force with 16 assists followed by Norén (7) and midfielder Lucas Norlin (6).
So Mahtal was excited about moving into his first full season at Djurgårdens, especially with the opportunity to reshape his squad and, hopefully, bring the average age down.
Could Djurgårdens compete for the Swedish title next season? Join us on Monday to find out!
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