Nestling in the heart of Scandinavia’s frozen threesome lies Sweden. Its landscape colonised by icy wastelands, emerald hills and twinkling turquoise torrents; its people wholesome, merry and above all, chic.
Health and wellbeing are of paramount importance here. Ice hockey matches fill up the local sports bars and one can expect to wake up to the the sound of Rollerski poles scratching against the floor at least once a week. There’s a vibrancy about the place.
Count football in on the list of sports the Swedes love. AC Milan and Paris Saint Germain attract a lot of attention, the great Zlatan Ibrahimovic knows how to captivate an audience, and the walls of the O’Leary’s bar in Stockholm’s old town can be seen draped in Arsenal and Manchester United memorabilia on a Saturday afternoon. Last week I attended a Manchester United v’s Liverpool legends match at the Friends Arena in Stockholm that attracted over 10,000 die-hard locals. They sang and chanted throughout. The atmosphere was terrific.
Unfortunately, from a personal point of view, Sweden appears to have escaped the touch of Manchester City across the globe. Since the club’s takeover in 2008 and the subsequent acquisition of four domestic trophies, City’s fanbase has grown by a staggering 523% according to a report published by Spanish newspaper Sport in February. Yet in Stockholm’s sports bars and in the often heated discussion threads on Twitter, Swedes only make a squeak among the roar.
There must be more Manchester City supporters in Sweden, I thought to myself. And after speaking with Bo Lönnqvist, who lives in Gothenburg, I learned that there are. Bo told me how he has been a supporter of the club since 1977 after a seemingly ordinary trip to London with his family.
I was in London with my parents and I wanted to support an English club. At the time I was nine years old and thought City was a cool name. I liked the sky blue colour, too. We were walking down Oxford Street and I saw a Manchester City cap in the window of a sports shop so I bought it.
Back then, the Premier League was known as the First Division, a league in which Manchester City finished fourth place in the 1977-78 season. It was a time when the legendary Colin Bell hypnotised spectators in City’s midfield, but it was striker Dennis Tueart who won the heart of the young Swede.
It was a long time ago, but I remember my favourite player at the time was Dennis Tueart. I guess seeing videos of that overhead kick he scored against Newcastle United in the 1976 Football League Cup final made me like him!
But it wasn’t often that Bo got the chance to see the Blues play. “At that time one game per week was televised in Sweden on a programme called Tipsextra. If you were lucky you could see City maybe three to four times per season,” he explains.
Nowadays, channels like Viasat make watching Premier League and European football and much easier task. Viasat Sport was launched as a pan-Nordic channel in 1999 and acquired the rights of the English Premier League in April 2010. It is now the most popular sports channel in Sweden. So what has the increased exposure to English football done for Manchester City’s reputation in Sweden? Not much, by the sounds of things.
Before the takeover, people asked me how I could support a loser club like City. Nowadays, they ask me how I can support an ‘oil run club’ like that.
It seems there’s still some animosity towards the way Manchester City are going about their business in Sweden, a place where the old school Milan sides and the individual feats of Henrik Larsson at Barcelona and Freddie Ljungberg at Arsenal hold great sentimental value. Perhaps Manchester City will never attract the same applause that these clubs do (our best Swedish player was Andreas Isaksson, after all), but I was delighted to learn about a thriving supporters group with close ties to the club.
“I am a member of ‘Citizens of Sweden’,” Bo told me.
Our website is www.citizensof.se and we have around 500 members. We are doing four trips to Manchester every season to see City and have a yearly meeting. We buy tickets directly from the club and as a result I have met a lot of new friends supporting City all over Sweden.
The news excited me, and Bo went on to tell me how welcoming the club have been to the supporters group.
Because of this group my son has been a mascot at the Etihad Stadium twice – one time with Sergio Agüero and another with his favourite player David Silva. ‘Citizens of Sweden’ also presents a Blue Swedish Horse to the player of the season and in May I had the opportunity to hand one over to James Milner for the 2014/2015 campaign.
The members of ‘Citizens of Sweden’ are making great strides towards promoting the club in their country. They have a local pub in the heart of Gothenburg called ‘Heart of the City’ which is regarded as an official City pub and they hope to gain more members throughout the season.
Bo left me with a prediction for Saturday’s game against Crystal Palace and a proposed date for ‘Citizens of Sweden’s’ next trip to Manchester.
“I’ll go for a 0-2 win for City. We hope to make it for the home fixture against Southampton in November and possibly a Champions League game before that!”
