billsportsmaps.com

Sweden: 2021 Allsvenskan – Location-maps, with 2 charts: Seasons-in-1st-division (current clubs) & All-time Swedish titles list
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By Bill Turianski on the 7th of May 2021; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
-Sweden – Summary (table, fixtures, results, stats, etc) (soccerway.com)
-2021 Allsvenskan (en.wikipedia.org).

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The map shows the 16 teams in the 2021 Allsvenskan, the top-flight football league of Sweden, which plays from April to November. On the map-page there are also two inset-maps: of Gothenburg (showing the 2 Allsvenskan clubs located there), and of Stockholm (showing the 3 Allsvenskan clubs located there). There is also a bit of demographic info on Sweden, found at the upper-left of the map-page. And below that is a list showing all 10 urban areas in Sweden that have a population above 100,000 {using data from this list: List of urban areas in Sweden by population}. And over at the top-right of the map-page are Sweden’s current football rankings… {As of May 2021: FIFA worldwide rank [national team]: #18; UEFA European rank [national team]: #13; National league-rank (UEFA): #23; Allsvenskan overall league average attendance [pre-COVID-19 pandemic]: 9,116 per game (2019).}

On the map…For each of the 16 Allsvenskan clubs of 2021, there is shown the following…
Location. Club crest.  Full club name, and year of origin. Stadium (and its capacity). 2019 average attendance [which was the most recent season before the COVID-19 pandemic affected attendance figures]. Swedish titles.

And there are 2 charts. One chart shows Seasons-in-Top-flight for the current clubs (2021 is the 97th season of top-flight football in Sweden). And another chart shows the All-time Swedish titles list (1896-1925; 1931-2020).

The map shows all the cities in the Scandinavian and Baltic Sea regions which have metro-area populations above 400,000. Those 15 cities are…St Petersburg (Russia), Stockholm (Sweden), Copenhagen (Denmark), Minsk (Belarus), Oslo (Norway), Helsinki (Finland), Gothenburg (Sweden), Gdansk (Poland), Kiel (Germany), Riga (Latvia), Malmo (Sweden), Kaliningrad (Russia), Vilnius (Lithuania), Bergen (Norway), Tallinn (Estonia).
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The most successful clubs, and the best-drawing clubs, in Sweden…
The club with the most seasons played in the Swedish top flight is AIK of Solna, in Stockholm. The black-and-gold-clad AIK have played 92 of the 97 Swedish top-flight seasons, and 2021 is their 16th consecutive season in the 1st tier. (AIK’s dark-blue-and-gold castle-motif crest is pretty distinctive, and looks even better on their black home jerseys.) Second-most seasons in the top flight belongs to IFK Göteborg, of Gothenburg (the second city of Sweden). The blue-and-white-striped IFK Göteborg have played 85 top flight seasons – and 45 consecutive. Those 45 straight top flight seasons for IFK Göteborg is the current best in Sweden. As for the most Swedish titles, that honor goes to the light-blue-and-white-clad Malmö FF, of Malmö, who are reigning champions and have won the title 21 times. Malmö FF is where Zlatan Ibrahimović got his start. (Malmö, which is connected to Copenhagen, Denmark, via the Øresund bridge/tunnel, is the 3rd-largest city in Sweden.)

And there you have what many refer to as the Big 3 of Sweden…AIK, IFK Göteborg, and Malmö FF. The three entered into an informal alliance in the 1970s under the partnership name ‘The Three Traditional Teams of Sweden’. And the three have produced the most players who ended up playing for the Swedish national team (although these days over 75% of the Swedish national team plays abroad). {Big Three (Sweden) (en.wikipedia.org).}

However, calling those three clubs (AIK, Göteborg, and Malmö) the Big 3 ignores a couple of significant aspects of Swedish football. Because there is one club that draws as well as, and wins as many titles as, members of this Big 3. That club is Djurgården {see next paragraph}. And also because, these days, there is one club which draws better than the Big 3 in Sweden, and that is Stockholm’s green-and-white-clad Hammarby IF. Although they draw over 20-thousand-per-game, Hammarby have only won one title, in 2001. Hammarby is a club that is traditionally comprised of more left-wing supporters than the other two big Stockholm clubs. Despite its large following, Hammarby has very often been either relegation-threatened or stuck in the second division. Hammarby used to play at the 12,000-capacity Söderstadion, in Söderort (the southern suburban part of the Stockholm Municipality). And circa 1998 to 2007, Hammarby were often playing to nearly-full-capacity there, drawing in the 10.9-K to 16.0-K range, which was still not enough to lead the country in football attendance (attendance leader in Sweden in that 10-year time-frame was either AIK or Malmö). That changed when Hammarby (along with Djurgården) moved into the new 30,000-capacity Tele2 Arena in September 2013. For Hammarby, it was a move of a only a ½ kilometer to the new stadium. In 2014, in their first full season at the new and much larger venue, second-division Hammarby won promotion, and led all of Sweden in attendance, at 20-K per game. In the following season of 2015, Hammarby, now back in the top flight, drew a record-setting 25.5-K-per game. And so now Hammarby are the best-drawing Swedish club, and drew in the 22-K to 25-K-range in the five seasons between 2015 and ’19. {2019 Allsvenskan attendances from E-F-S site}. So in that sense, Hammarby are sort of like the Newcastle United of Sweden – a club that has a huge fan base yet have an almost barren trophy cabinet and are often relegation-threatened.

And meanwhile, there is a Swedish club outside the Big 3 that draws better than one of the Big 3, and is just as successful as another of the Big 3. That club is the navy-blue-and-light-blue-clad Djurgårdens IF, of Stockholm, who were the 2019 title-winners. Djurgården have won just as many titles as local rivals AIK (12 titles each). Djurgården draws only slightly less than AIK (Djurgården drew 15.9-K in 2019, compared to AIK’s 18.9-K), but Djurgården draws better than IFK Göteborg (who drew 12.8-K in 2019). Djurgården are popularly known as the posh club of Stockholm. Djurgården played at the 30-K-capacity stadium-with-running-track Stockholms Stadion, in Stockholm’s north-eastern side, for 68 years (1936-1993). In 2013 they moved to southern Stockholm into the new Tele2 Arena (along with Hammarby). But Djurgården have not had the huge attendance-increase, like Hammarby, at the new stadium, but are drawing well nonetheless, drawing between 12.3-K and 16.2-K in the five seasons from 2015 to ’19. I think one would have to discount Hammarby for lack of titles, but Djurgården belongs in the conversation about the biggest clubs in Sweden: it really should be the Big 4.

But even that would be inaccurate, because there is another successful Swedish club with a decent sized fanbase that deserves a mention here. And that is the white-and-blue-clad IFK Norrköping, from the small city of Norrköping (population 95,000). IFK Norrköping have won the third-most Swedish titles – 13 (most recently in 2015). Norrköping have played the fourth-most seasons in the Allsvenskan – 80. From 2015 to ’19, Norrköping have drawn in the 8.4-K to 10.4-K-range, which is not bad at all for a club from a city with slightly less than 100,000 inhabitants.

At the time of this posting [Friday 7 May 2021], after 4 games, Djurgården leads the Allsvenskan, with 4 wins (including beating Malmö 3-1 last weekend).

{Here is a link to a post I made on the highest-drawing football clubs from the Nordic countries [from July 2016]. It features illustrations for the 5 Swedish clubs which had drawn above 10,000-per-game in 2015 (Hammarby, AIK, Malmö FF, Djurgården, IFK Göteborg, Norrköping).}.

{flashscore.co.uk/football/sweden/allsvenskan.}
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Thanks to all at the following links…
-Blank map of Scandinavia, by NordNordWest at File:Scandinavia location map.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Globe-map of Sweden, by Rob984 at File:EU-Sweden_(orthographic_projection).svg (en.wikipedia.org).
-Map of Gothenburg area, segment of map by NordNordWest at File:Sweden location map, 40south.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Map of Greater Stockholm, segment of map by Eric Frohne at File:Sweden Stockholm location map.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Attendance figures, european-football-statistics.co.uk.
-Football rankings, football-ranking.com.
-Goteborgs IF crest, from klubbmarken.com/goteborg.htm.