From Subway to Champions League: Jacob Bergström's Journey

On a bike, past the flags and the fishing boats, towards Yaya Touré and the Champions League. That is Jacob Bergström’s route to work these days.

A few years ago, the 31-year-old was making sandwiches at Subway and playing amateur football at 22, still overlooked by every academy that mattered. He did not sign his first full-time professional contract until he was 24. The dream had never really been the Champions League. The dream was simply to make it.

Now he is the centre-forward of a club that has ripped up Swedish football’s script.

From Subway shifts to Swedish champions

Bergström joined Mjällby in 2018, a big, burly striker happy just to land in the third division. The badge alone felt like a breakthrough.

“When I first came here, we were in the third division,” he tells BBC Sport. “I was so happy to sign. It was so big to me then.”

He still worked at Subway to pay the bills. The Champions League was something you watched, not something you played in. Certainly not with Mjällby.

“I never dreamed of anything like this. It was like, I didn’t even think about it. For me to be here now is crazy, and to do it with Mjällby as well is amazing.”

Crazy fits. Over the past year, Bergström has helped Mjällby win the Swedish championship and the Swedish Cup for the first time in the club’s 87-year history. The small coastal side from Blekinge, long on heart and short on resources, suddenly stood on top of the country.

Then came Europe. Then came his Champions League debut. And a goal.

A village on the edge of Europe

The story is so striking because of where it happens. Mjällby are based in Hällevik, a coastal village in southern Sweden with fewer than 1,000 residents. It looks like the kind of place where footballers come from, not where European nights are staged.

As the strongest team in Blekinge County, Mjällby pull in support from across the region. Last season they averaged home crowds of around 5,000. On paper, it is modest. In reality, for a village this size, it feels like the whole county is squeezing into Strandvallen.

They also attract players like Bergström, who grew up an hour’s drive north in Karlskrona, Blekinge’s naval city where handball and ice hockey usually come first. For him, this is home twice over.

When he returned to Mjällby in 2023 after a short spell at Djurgården in Stockholm, he and his wife moved to Hällevik. Their two children now grow up where their father rides a bike to work and the Baltic Sea is a constant backdrop.

In winter, Hällevik is quiet, almost sleepy. In summer, holidaymakers arrive and the population quadruples. Strandvallen sits just 100 metres from the water, tucked between woods, a campsite and an outdoor swimming pool. It is part stadium, part summer postcard.

“You have the ocean and the people,” Bergström says. “It’s so beautiful by the water and the beach.

“In the winter there’s not many people here, so it doesn’t fit for everyone, but it fits for us.”

A cult hero with beer in his hair

On the pitch, the 6ft 3in target man has become the symbol of Mjällby’s underdog spirit. He plays like the region feels: rugged, unpolished, unbothered by reputation.

He once celebrated a goal in front of Malmö fans and stood firm as they showered him with beer. Later he joked that “it tasted very good”. After a win away to Mjällby’s big-city rivals last season, he grabbed a megaphone and led the chant: “whoever doesn’t jump is a Malmö pig”.

This is not the polished superstar of a global brand. This is the guy you still see in the local supermarket, the one who still cycles to games. BBC Sport bumped into him there the day after last month’s Champions League qualifier at Strandvallen.

Despite the titles, despite Europe, Bergström remains the regular local who just happens to be scoring on the continent.

Jazz bands, deckchairs and a Champions League dream

Mjällby’s first European game, against Lincoln Red Imps of Gibraltar, turned Hällevik into a festival ground. A jazz band greeted 3,500 fans at Strandvallen. Another 2,300 people dragged deckchairs and cool boxes down to the marina to watch on a big screen.

“[Playing in Europe] is special for the whole village and for everyone here at the club,” says Bergström.

“Every time I take my bike to the game, I see all the people in their yellow and black shirts. Everyone has flags in their garden. It’s so fun to see everyone get together.

“They are so proud to be part of this journey we’ve made together.”

A 0-0 draw in Gibraltar was enough to send Mjällby into the third qualifying round. Waiting there: Slovan Bratislava and a rookie head coach with one of the biggest Champions League résumés of them all.

Yaya Touré comes to Strandvallen

Yaya Touré, the former Manchester City powerhouse who helped Barcelona win the 2009 Champions League final in Rome, took the Slovan job in June. His first managerial posting drops him into a very different European night.

Tuesday’s first leg at Strandvallen (17:00 BST) will be unlike any Champions League game he has known. No grand boulevard to the stadium. No sweeping bowl of steel and glass.

Instead, a long drive through fields, tractors flying Mjällby flags, and a modest ground where the noise punches far above its size.

Many visiting teams do not enjoy the trip. The journey feels endless, the surroundings deceptive. Then the whistle goes and the sound crashes down from a home crowd that grows even louder on European nights.

For continental fixtures, Mjällby’s hardcore supporters move into the biggest seated stand, concentrating the volume. It is raw, close, personal.

Touré, 43, has already noted that Mjällby have “something that other teams don’t have”. He brings with him the 24-time Slovakian champions, a heavyweight at this level, to fight for a place in the Champions League play-offs.

Whatever happens next, the journey continues

Mjällby will again be the underdog. The club from the fishing village against the serial champions from the capital. A man who once clocked in at Subway facing a midfielder who once ruled midfields at the very top.

The stakes are clear: win, and the fairytale rolls on towards the group stages. Lose, and the story does not end, only changes competition. Mjällby are guaranteed at least a place in this season’s Conference League.

So Bergström will meet more stars. He will line up for more anthems. He will keep pedalling that bike past the flags and the gardens and the Baltic, heading for a stage he never dared to picture.

For a striker who never dreamed this big, the question now is simple: how much higher can this little club – and its unlikely hero – climb?