“There was definitely daylight during the night hours up there,” says Romain Gall of the winter situation in Sundsvall, Sweden, which sits on the Swedish coast a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic circle. “When I first got to Sweden, that was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced.”



Gall has had plenty of time to acquaint himself with the country at this point, having played for three different Swedish professional teams in the span of two years. He started in 2016 with Nyköpings BIS, in the third division, before moving north and into the top flight, the Allsvenskan, with GIF Sundsvall. And he began this season way down at the southern tip of Sweden with Malmö FF, former club of one Zlatan Ibrahimovic.



The 23-year-old’s rapid upward trajectory might surprise people who lost track of Gall in recent years. He made a name for himself with the United States U-20s and FC Lorient’s academy, in...