Pakistan captain Abdullah Iqbal at the heart of Swedish club Mjallby's fairytale rise

Defender has played a pivotal role as tiny seaside club close in on championship

Mjallby's Abdullah Iqbal has caught the eye of many in Sweden and beyond. Reuters

History struggles to shout very loud in Hellevik, a low-key seaside village on Sweden’s Listerlandet peninsula. The population is less than 1,000. The stadium where Mjallby football club play holds a maximum of 6,500. But this weekend, they are braced for some real noise, for the possibility of a truly historic celebration that will spread across the region.

Mjallby are on the verge of claiming the Allsvenskan title, the Swedish championship, a first for a club that seven years ago were in the third tier and whose startling climb has many heroes.

Like the head coach, Anders Torstensson, who grew up with Mjallby and combined his earlier stints in charge of the first team with careers in the military and as a school principal.

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And his assistant, a young Norwegian, Marius Aksum who answered an advertisement posted by Mjallby last year and sent in a CV that boasts a PhD. Aksum got the job and quickly gained the confidence of the squad.

And then there’s the mix of ambition, purpose and openness to new skills of the players, some locally born or raised, some from further afield.

Like the captain of Pakistan, Abdullah Iqbal, a footballer at the very heart of Mjallby’s fairytale, a story whose compelling final chapter could be completed by Sunday if a home win against Elfsborg is followed by second-placed Hammarby, 11 points behind with five matchdays left, slipping up.

Abdullah Iqbal has gone on to captain the Pakistan national team. Reuters

Iqbal’s achievement, becoming champion of a respected European league, will be a piece of history in itself. Being skipper of Pakistan’s men’s football team is not like being Babar Azam or, for that matter Imran Khan, for whom leadership of the national cricket team is so weighty a role it can play a part in electoral success in the highest office of state.

In football, far behind cricket in the country’s sporting hierarchy, Pakistan do not win World Cups. Indeed, they mark significant progress, as they did last year, if they can simply clamber beyond the pre-qualifying hurdle.

So the gold medal Iqbal collects, perhaps this weekend, perhaps later this month, with Mjallby marks a threshold moment for the game in Pakistan.

“I’m delighted for him,” says Stephen Constantine, who, as head coach of Pakistan, gave the 22-year defender the skipper’s armband with the intention of cultivating his clear leadership potential.

As Constantine acknowledged to The National, he wanted to encourage Iqbal to express himself more boldly. “He can seem quite laid-back, and I told him to be a bit more aggressive on the pitch. He’s a wonderful player and a wonderful human being who leads by his actions.”

Those observations are echoed by Torstensson, who sees in Iqbal the essence of what has driven Mjallby so unexpectedly high up a league which, while not among the heavyweight divisions of Europe, was good enough to have had a club, Djurgardens, in the semi-final of a Uefa competition last May.

“We scouted him and we thought he would be a good fit,” recalls the head coach of the process that elevated Iqbal from second division football with the B.93 club in his native Denmark. “He’s a player who has really developed here, a great guy, a leader and really important for us. He has everything you want.”

Specifically, that’s a commanding height, 1.92m. He has a strong aerial game, but also, as Constantine notes “good feet and good vision. He’s confident playing the ball out from the back.” At times during Constantine’s tenure with the national team – he left the Pakistan coaching job earlier this summer – he had pondered “whether maybe I should play him further forward”.

Those traits, the midfield instincts of the centre-back, appealed to Mjallby’s coaching staff, whose plan over the past 18 months is based around controlled passing football, with quick transitions. “He has a level of technique that means he can dribble almost like a winger,” says Aksum of Iqbal. “He’s a strong central defender but also an exciting, quick player.”

Mjallby signed Iqbal in August 2024, mid-season in the Swedish football calendar, trumping interest from lower-division clubs in Italy. His acclimatisation to the Allsvenskan initially suffered a setback, a back injury just as he was being eased into the side. “He struggled and he really didn't play for the entire autumn,” recalls Aksum.

That November, Majallby finished the season fifth; by March, Iqbal was fit to begin the new campaign but faced competition for a starting role.

“When we began pre-season in January, February, he looked like he was far off the level,” Aksum admits, “nowhere near a first XI place. And then, because of two injuries, he got the chance to play in the season opener. He performed OK, and then he got a chance in the next game, and from there his form just exploded. He has played fantastic football, and he has shown he has higher levels he can still get to, that’s for sure.”

A minor fitness issue has sidelined Iqbal for the last couple of matches, but he is a mainstay of Torstensson’s side, and part of a Mjallby defensive unit that, as recent call-ups to the Sweden squad of Iqbal’s central defensive partner Axel Noren and goalkeeper Noel Törnqvist show, is now admired nationally.

More history-in-the-making here: Before last month, no footballer had ever been picked by Sweden while employed by Mjallby.

And national admiration for Mjallby’s rising stars inevitably means international interest. Tornqvist has already been signed by Como of Italy and will move there in January. Iqbal has been linked with fellow Serie A club Cremonese and with possible suitors in the top two divisions of England. “He has the level to play in the top five leagues of Europe,” reckons Constantine, “and there’s much to come from him.”

The former Pakistan coach remembers phoning Torstensson earlier this year, when the defender was still relatively new to Mjallby and the rise of both player and club was still raising eyebrows. “I called just to let him know I planned to make him captain of Pakistan,” recalls Constantine. “Anders approved, and said, ‘I think it will help him’. And I told him: ‘You know, this kid’s going to be very good’.”