European football can feel very predictable. The same clubs spend their fortunes on the world’s most valuable stars, cruise to the final eight of continental tournaments, and dominate their domestic leagues. In a way, football at the very top has stagnated. But in the geographical centre of Sweden, in an isolated place known to the rest of the country as “up in the mountains of the north,” a new approach has taken root and blossomed on the European stage.

Östersund were in the fourth tier of Swedish football as recently as 2010. They had little by way of vision or resources and were struggling to make football work in a town dominated by winter sports, in a country dominated by clubs in the south, and in a game dominated by money. So how did this club based 240 miles from the Arctic Circle find themselves playing Arsenal in the last 32 of the Europa League?

The trajectory of the club changed six years ago, when Daniel Kindberg took over as chairman. Kindberg and his newly appointed English manager, Graham Potter, employed new ideas and changed the established framework, describing their approach as very “eljest”, a word from the north of Sweden that means “be different” – in a good way.

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“We were relegated to the fourth tier of Swedish football – the lowest you can go,” says Kindberg. “We had a handful of players, no manager, no staff, no ideas. We started with an analysis of the football world and came to the conclusion that if everybody trains the same, plays the same and organises the same and we do exactly the same, we will end up in a number’s game and we would be exactly where the money takes us – and we don’t have money.”

OFK’s had to be different, something Potter understood from the start. “We’ve got no history, no tradition, no culture here and not the finance to attract players,” says the manager. “Therefore you’re looking for the ones who have been discarded – the ones where conventional football has said: ‘No, no, no. He’s not good enough.’”

The eljest stretches beyond the club’s recruitment policy. They have taken the football club from the pitch to the community in unprecedented ways, most visibly through their “Culture Academy.” Designed to put players and staff completely out of their comfort zones, the culture academy incorporates a mandatory annual art workshop, be it dance, poetry, singing. Its purpose is to build confidence and bravery, while pushing the team into the greater community. “The people up here are a very, very proud people,” says Kindberg. “We are big on sports – most of skates and skis, of course – but now everybody is a fan of the football.”

Since 2010, OFK have been promoted from the fourth tier to the top flight, won the Swedish Cup in 2017, and have now beaten Galatasaray, PAOK and Hertha Berlin in the Europa League. Östersund are as unorthodox as they come and their results are undeniable. In a sport that is increasingly predictable, Östersund are changing the odds by being different.

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