From Subway to Champions League: Jacob Bergström's Remarkable Journey
On a thin strip of Swedish coastline where forest meets the Baltic, a 6ft 3in striker still rides his bike to work and sometimes gets showered in beer for his troubles.
A few years ago, Jacob Bergström was making sandwiches at Subway and playing amateur football at 22. Now, at 31, he is preparing to face a Champions League winner in Yaya Touré – and trying to drag tiny Mjällby yet another step deeper into Europe’s elite competition.
From Subway shifts to the Champions League
Bergström never passed through a youth academy. No polished academy pitches, no conveyor belt to the top. He was still outside the professional system when most players his age were already being discarded by it.
Mjällby finally picked him up in 2018. Even then, football did not immediately pay the bills. He worked shifts at Subway while leading the line for a club stuck far from the spotlight, turning fully professional only at 24.
That late start has not slowed him. Over the past year, the burly target man has powered Mjällby to the most improbable season in their 87-year history: a first Swedish championship and a first Swedish Cup, a double that shook the domestic hierarchy and sent a shockwave around Europe’s quieter corners.
He then scored on his Champions League debut. Now comes Slovan Bratislava in the third qualifying round – and with them, Touré, the former Barcelona and Manchester City midfielder who lifted the Champions League trophy in 2009 and took his first senior managerial job with the Slovak champions in June.
“When I first came here, we were in the third division,” Bergström tells BBC Sport. “I was so happy to sign. It was so big to me then. I never dreamed of anything like this… For me to be here now is crazy, and to do it with Mjällby as well is amazing.”
A powerhouse from a village of 1,000
Part of the fascination lies in where all this is happening.
Mjällby are based in Hällevik, a quiet fishing village in southern Sweden with fewer than 1,000 residents. It is not a footballing metropolis. It is not even a town. Yet this place now hosts Champions League qualifiers and draws attention from across Europe.
As the strongest side in Blekinge County, Mjällby pull supporters from every corner of the region. Last season they averaged home crowds of around 5,000 – five times the population of Hällevik itself.
Bergström grew up an hour north in Karlskrona, Blekinge’s naval capital, where handball and ice hockey tend to dominate. Football was not the obvious path. But it became his.
After a brief spell with Stockholm giants Djurgården, he returned to Mjällby in 2023. This time he brought his family with him. He, his wife and their two children moved to Hällevik and made the village their home.
In winter, the place goes quiet. The harbour stills, the tourists vanish, and the cold rolls in off the Baltic. In summer, the population quadruples as holidaymakers pour in. For Bergström, that rhythm works.
“You have the ocean and the people,” he 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.”
The striker who tastes the beer
Strandvallen, Mjällby’s home ground, sits just 100 metres from the sea, wedged between woodland, a campsite and an outdoor swimming pool. Bergström often cycles there for training and on matchdays, pedalling past gardens draped in yellow and black.
That journey has become part of the story. Fans now see him as one of their own – a local giant who carries the underdog spirit of rural Blekinge onto the pitch.
He plays that role with relish. In one match against Malmo, he celebrated in front of the away fans and stood his ground as plastic cups rained down on him. Later, he quipped that the beer “tasted very good”.
After a win over Mjällby’s big-city rivals last season, he grabbed a megaphone and led the away end in a chant: “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Malmo pig.” No polish, no media training. Just a raw connection with supporters who see their lives reflected in his.
Despite the titles, the goals and the European adventure, Bergström has not drifted away from that world. He still cycles to games. Supporters still bump into him at the local supermarket. BBC Sport did exactly that the day after last month’s Champions League qualifier at Strandvallen.
Europe comes to Strandvallen
That first European night against Lincoln Red Imps from Gibraltar felt like a village festival as much as a football match. A jazz band greeted 3,500 fans at the ground. Another 2,300 settled into deckchairs at Hällevik’s marina, cool boxes at their feet, to watch the game on a big screen.
“[Playing in Europe] is special for the whole village and for everyone here at the club,” Bergström says. “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 through to the third qualifying round, setting up a tie that feels like fiction: the Swedish village club against the 24-time Slovak champions, led by one of the defining midfielders of his generation.
Touré knows the highest level. He dictated a Champions League final at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico in 2009. He dominated midfields in England and Spain. But Tuesday’s first leg at Strandvallen (17:00 BST) will offer him something entirely different.
The road to Hällevik is long and narrow, cutting through farmland and open fields. There are few landmarks, just tractors and the occasional Mjällby flag fluttering from them. Many visiting teams do not enjoy the trip. By the time they arrive at the modest ground, the noise hits them.
For European games, Mjällby’s hardcore support moves into the largest seated stand, compressing the sound and cranking up the intensity. The setting may be small; the atmosphere is not.
Touré, 43, has already admitted that Mjällby possess “something that other teams don’t have”. He will see it up close now, with a place in the Champions League play-offs at stake.
Whatever happens over two legs, Mjällby’s season in Europe will not end there. Their run has already guaranteed them at least a spot in this year’s Conference League.
So Bergström, the former Subway worker who once cycled to lower-league games in front of a few hundred people, will meet more stars yet. The question now is simple: how much further can this village club – and its late-blooming, beer-soaked centre-forward – bend the limits of what is supposed to be possible?
