IFK Göteborg and Malmö FF cruising through another season in the lower leagues. They have both climbed to Division 2 now so first possible season in Damallsvenskan would be in 2025 if they manage to climb through Div 1 and Elitettan too the next years. Malmö drawing decent crowds, I saw they had over 800 in their last match, IFK had only 97 so they are not attracting big crowds for everyday league matches it seems.
FC Rosengård beat Häcken 2-1 (Sprung, Sanders - Kaneryd) in yesterday's cup final played at Rosengård's home ground. Häcken with a strong first half, then it was mostly Rosengård but 1-1 after 90 mins. In the end a fair win despite a very controversial winning goal in extra time. A ball that was or wasn't over the line, noone will ever know. Long highlights clip available here: https://www.fotbollskanalen.se/vide...rosengard-cupmastare-efter-tveksamt-segermal/ She was rested. Had problems with her achilles this season. Might seem a bit strange to rest her in the cup final instead of league, but league is main priority. Things like this doesn't really help the low status of the cup though.
Ah, gotcha. I was more concerned it was a last minute injury, but her resting makes sense. Thanks so much!
Been quiet here for 4 months , oops . Damallsvenskan coming to an end now! This weekend we had Round 22 out of 26 and it was a very decisive round. Battle for the title and top 3 KIF Örebro - FC Rosengård 2-4 (Pechersky, Augustdottir - Larsson, Bredgaard, Schough 2) Rosengård haven't exactly looked rock solid lately and again had to come back from behind, but they do generally find a way to do just that and another title is close now! Eskilstuna - Kristianstad 1-1 (Nyström - Viens) Eskilstuna fighting to survive degradation for financial reasons but still doing ok on the pitch. Kristianstad likely lost their chance to fight for the title here. Linköping - Häcken 1-5 (Takarada - Rubensson 2, Hammarlund 2, Rybrink) A surprisingly big win for Häcken in the top match got them right back in to the top 3 fight. Linköping been a positive surprise this season but they have not been good enough against the top teams. Piteå - Hammarby 1-1 (Guillou - Cooney-Cross) Piteå would have been relegated last season if it wasn't for the league expansion, much better season now. Hammarby were hoping to be top 3 but didn't quite make it this year. Battle for survival Brommapojkarna - IFK Kalmar 2-3 (Prakt, Barsley - Persson, Fischerova, Kemppi) Big win for Kalmar who probably secured a new contract with this win. Very close between the other 3 at the bottom. Vittsjö - Umeå IK 5-0 (Rantala, Polkinghorne, Sällström, Stratigakis, Sjödahl) Umeå shockingly beat Vittsjö 4-0 in round 3 but Vittsjö got their revenge this weekend. Umeå looked promising at the start of the season but have not won since early May and now also in big financial problems. Djurgården - AIK 4-2 (Lundin 2, Alwqvist, Mawete - Klingwall, Siemsen) AIK have had a poor season in so many ways and couldn't surprise in the Stockholm derby either.
End of season summary FC Rosengård in the end the best team this season. I was not terribly impressed by them this season but they did manage to win even when they didn't play great football. The other top teams were a bit too inconsistent. BK Häcken finished the season strongly and claimed 2nd place in the end. 3rd Champions League spot went to Linköpings FC. All three familiar with playing in Europe from before. Classic Umeå IK not the team they used to be and sadly relegated again, this time only due to goal difference. AIK also relegated after a very messy season in many way not least when it comes to management. Both likely to fight for promotion again next season. Promoted from from Elitettan are Växjö DFF and IFK Norrköping. Växjö DFF were relegated from Damallsvenskan last season but won the league without losing any matches. They also beat IFK Kalmar convincingly in the cup so shouldn't be worse than the relegated teams. IFK Norrköping is a classic and relatively rich (by Swedish standards) club on the men's side so will be interesting to see what they can do their first season ever in Damallsvenskan. Season is over but not the drama Some sad news as Eskilstuna United will be relegated due to financial reasons (unless their appeal goes through). Uppsala, who lost the promotion/relegation battle against Brommapojkarna, should be getting the vacant spot. Too bad Uppsala only got the news now as they already lost their top scorer to Norrköping. The expansion of the league from 12 to 14 teams was not really a disaster, there haven't really been more huge defeats than normal, I guess mostly because top teams keep getting weaker. Not sure it did any good either though, all the new teams were stuck at the bottom all season. With Eskilstuna gone too I'd rather see 12 teams next year as Uppsala will surely be weaker. Top goal scorers:
They have been around since 2009. I don't know the full history but I think they were not fully integrated with the men's club until 2018. Last year was their first season in Elitettan (the 2nd Tier) and their 2nd season they were promoted to Damallsvenskan. Further down some interesting things going on. 3rd tier is going from 6 divisions in 2022 to 3 divisions for 2023. The southern division is looking particularly interesting. Both classic clubs Malmö FF and IFK Göteborg have reached 3rd tier now after another promotion for both. They started from the lowest league a few years ago with their new women's teams. Along them another classic club Örgryte were promoted to this league and current Allsvenskan teams on the men's side Halmstad and IFK Värnamo are there as well along with the B-teams of Rosengård and Häcken.
Not sure if this thread is live anymore. Just curious if anyone has a hack to watch the Damallsvenskan in the US. The league is being live-streamed by Viaplay this season, which requires a Swedish credit card to register. Using the US site, they limit you to Swedish soap operas. No thanks. My daughter is over there playing so any help is appreciated.
Time has come for a post for the 2023 season, we are only 20 rounds into it after all.... But this is an exciting time to start following the season if you haven't before! 3 teams within 1 point of the title with 6 games to go Only a few rounds ago Häcken looked like the clear favourites, but 3 winless games now and this is wide open. Hammarby topping on better goal difference now and this would their first Damallsvenskan title (they have won the former Swedish championship in 1985). They are also the team with the biggest fan base and set the 2nd highest crowd ever for Damallsvenskan the other week with 12830 spectators. 3 time champions Linköping only 1 point behind the top 2 and 2018 shock winners Piteå also somehow up there again 3 points behind. Would be fun to see the village Vittsjö (village interestingly with 3 Australian World Cup players) finally reach Champions League. All teams top 7 are basically of same quality and the evenness is both the strength and weakness of the league. Strength as it gives talents and foreigners a lot of good games of still reasonably good quality. Weakness because we don't really have a top team that can challenge in Europe anymore and having different teams representing you in Europe is unfortunately also bad for the rankings and seedings which will make it even more difficult to reach CL group stage going forward. Likely only two CL spots to fight for soon too instead of three. Looks like the reign of FC Rosengård is over, only 7th! They have been dominant since 2010 with 8 league titles and since Damallsvenskan began in 1988 they have only been out of the top 3 one time (2006). Though for many of those years they were named Malmö FF Dam and for a few years Ldb FC Malmö. The new Malmö FF team which started from scratch a few years ago will play in Elitettan (the 2nd tier) next season and surely soon they will be the main Malmö team also in Damallsvenskan. Below the top 7 new comers IFK Norrköping has been a positive surprise with good fan support and often challenging the top teams, though in the end generally struggling to get points out of those games. Djurgården is the only team that has beaten Häcken this year and they did it twice! Looking solid after some good summer signings. KIF Örebro also too good to go down and Växjö might have a big enough cushion after winning the right games. IFK Kalmar is a bit of a disaster team. After importing more foreign players than they were even allowed to have in match squad last season and having lost a lot of local support they find themselves in financial trouble now. Most of their starting line-up left this summer and they now have a very young team. Any loss below 5 goals will be a success. They will deservedly go down and hopefully they can restart and build a more sustainable team with local talent again. Up to Uppsala and Brommapojkarna to battle it out to avoid the 2nd direct relegation spot. Yo-yo team AIK look certain to be promoted top Damallsvenskan next season accompanied by Alingsås or Trelleborg.