The Scandals That Shook Swedish Football: Ten Moments The Game Would Rather Forget
Every country has its dark chapters. The matches that were fixed, the nights that descended into violence, the men who betrayed the clubs that trusted them. Here are ten of them.
SFN Editor ·
Kindberg and the Rise and Fall of Östersunds FK (2019)
No story in Swedish football history begins quite like this one. A mid-sized city in northern Sweden, a charismatic chairman, a club that went from Division 1 to the Europa League in nine years, beat Arsenal at Highbury Lane and somehow made the entire football world take notice.
Daniel Kindberg was the architect of all of it. He was also, the court would find, systematically stealing from it.
In November 2019, Kindberg was convicted of gross disloyalty to his employer and sentenced to three years in prison. The money he had moved, manipulated and misappropriated had helped build the empire, but it had also quietly been hollowing it out. By the time the full picture emerged, Östersunds FK were in financial freefall. Relegation followed. Then further relegation. The club that had played European football just years earlier was scratching around in the lower divisions.
The committee that investigated the affair called it one of the largest economic scandals in Swedish football history. Nobody seriously disagreed.
The Match That Was Never Played — AIK vs IFK Göteborg (May 2017)
On the morning of 18 May 2017, AIK goalkeeper Kenny Stamatopoulos reported something that Swedish football had long feared but preferred not to discuss. Someone had contacted him. Someone had offered money. Someone wanted him to lose the match against IFK Göteborg, one of the most important fixtures on the Allsvenskan calendar.
Stamatopoulos refused. He reported it. The match was postponed.
The investigation that followed lasted two years. Two men, both former players with AIK connections, were eventually prosecuted. The Stockholm district court acquitted them, finding the approach had not been sufficiently concrete to constitute a criminal offer of a bribe. The court of appeal disagreed. A conviction followed.
The incident was not isolated. An SVT Sport survey of players across the top three Swedish divisions found that at least 17 had been approached by match-fixers, 82 had played in matches they suspected were fixed, and 73 knew of fixed matches that had never been reported. The 2017 case was simply the one that broke the surface.
Nordic United FC and the Södertälje Connection (2023 to present)
The story of Nordic United FC, a club from Södertälje that rose through the Swedish football pyramid with remarkable speed, reads differently depending on what you already know about the city.
Södertälje has a well-documented organised crime problem. The Södertälje criminal network, a grouping of criminals with roots in the city's large Assyrian and Syriac diaspora, has been the subject of major police investigations for years. When Expressen and Fotbollsthlm began reporting on the club's connections to individuals linked to that network, Swedish football had a serious problem on its hands.
Sporting director Daniel Shahho was convicted of four years in prison for serious economic crimes and is under investigation for involvement in a global match-fixing network. The club's chairman was arrested in a dawn raid as part of Operation Ragnhild, a major police operation targeting organised crime in Södertälje. Södertälje Municipality stopped all financial support to the club. Police stated openly that they feared the club was being used for money laundering and match-fixing.
The club denied everything. The investigation continues.
The Scandal at Parken, Copenhagen (June 2007)
Sweden were minutes from a famous victory. Leading 3-2 against Denmark in a Euro qualifying match at Parken in Copenhagen, Sweden were awarded a late penalty. Then the evening took a turn nobody had anticipated.
A drunk Danish supporter ran onto the pitch and attempted to attack the referee. Danish players intervened and prevented contact, but the referee's team assessed the situation and abandoned the match. Sweden were awarded a 3-0 victory.
The supporter issued a public apology the following day.
"I want to apologise. It was extremely stupid of me. I want to apologise to all of Denmark, Sweden and the referee for my inhuman behaviour," he told Sportbladet.
The Firecracker Against Tobias Sana, Gamla Ullevi (April 2016)
Allsvenskan had seen pyrotechnics incidents before 20 April 2016. It had not seen anything quite like this. A masked man made his way to the upper tier of Gamla Ullevi's home section during the match between IFK Göteborg and Malmö FF, ignited a firecracker, and threw it directly onto the pitch, where it landed beside Malmö FF winger Tobias Sana during his warm-up.
Sana, shaken and furious, grabbed the nearest corner flag and hurled it back towards the supporters. He later regretted it deeply.
"Now that I have come out of the shock, I feel that it was the stupidest decision of my life. There are many young people who look up to me and I really want to apologise," he told Aftonbladet.
The man identified as responsible was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison for causing bodily harm.
The Gate Storming at Råsunda, Solna (October 2004)
The match between Hammarby IF and AIK on 18 October 2004 was never going to be a calm occasion. AIK were fighting relegation. Hammarby were the hosts. The atmosphere inside Råsunda Stadion was already at the limit before a ball had been kicked.
When Hammarby took the lead in the 65th minute, sections of the AIK support decided the appropriate response was to storm the perimeter fencing. Gates gave way under the pressure. Supporters spilled towards the pitch. Police responded with water cannons, one of the few occasions in modern Swedish football that water cannons have been deployed inside a stadium.
Order was eventually restored and the match resumed. It finished 1-1. Afterwards, 32 people were charged with violent disorder.
The Firecracker in Södertälje — Syrianska vs AIK (April 2011)
The match between Syrianska FC and AIK on 25 April 2011 lasted 20 minutes. That was when referee Daniel Wärnmark was struck by a firecracker believed to have come from the AIK section of the crowd and was forced to abandon the fixture.
Syrianska were awarded a 3-0 victory. AIK were fined 150,000 kronor, not for the firecracker specifically, but for the broader volume of pyrotechnics that had been thrown onto the pitch and towards the crowd during those 20 minutes.
The Pear at Stockholms Stadion (April 2013)
The incident has become one of Swedish football's more absurd footnotes. During the match between Djurgårdens IF and Mjällby AIF on 8 April 2013, Mjällby took the lead through Robin Strömberg in the 37th minute. In the celebration that followed, Mjällby defender Gbenga Arokoyo was struck in the head by an object thrown from the Djurgården end.
The object was a pear.
"My teammates told me it was a fruit. It hurt so much, I thought it was a stone," Arokoyo told Aftonbladet. "I was shocked. It should not be about violence, it should have been a good match for both teams."
The match was briefly suspended. Djurgårdens IF issued an apology. The pear has never been forgotten.
The Scandal Derby at Tele2 Arena — Djurgårdens IF vs AIK (May 2023)
What happened at Tele2 Arena on 28 May 2023 was not spontaneous. Police would later describe it as organised, planned and executed with precision.
After Djurgården scored to take the lead, masked AIK supporters rained bengals, fireworks and chairs down from the upper tier onto the sections below. Groups of masked men made their way onto the pitch and confronted riot police. The match was suspended for one hour.
"This is sad. In my opinion, such behaviour is not worthy of AIK," said AIK CEO Manuel Lindberg, who resigned from his position shortly afterwards.
16 people were charged. 12 were convicted. Two received prison sentences. The Swedish Football Association launched a formal review, a formal crash investigation, into stadium security across the country.
Djurgården won the match 1-0.
The HIF Match Relocation Scandal (2020)
Not every scandal in Swedish football involves violence. Some involve something quieter but in many ways more troubling: officials using their authority to bend rules in favour of connected clubs.
During the 2020 season, played under the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic, Helsingborgs IF benefited from a decision by the competition committee to relocate a match in circumstances that many in Swedish football argued broke the committee's own regulations. The decision was described by multiple voices within the sport as preferential treatment for a historically significant club at the expense of smaller ones.
No criminal charges were brought. But the episode damaged confidence in Swedish football's governance structures and prompted calls for greater transparency in how decisions affecting clubs are made.
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Ten scandals, one uncomfortable truth
What these ten episodes share is not a failure of Swedish football. It is a mirror of the society around it. The corruption, the violence, the abuse of power, none of it was invented inside football. It arrived from outside, wearing football's clothes.
The match-fixers who approached Kenny Stamatopoulos were not football people. The men behind Nordic United's alleged criminal connections came from organised crime networks that existed long before the club did. The individuals who stormed the gates at Råsunda and rained bengals down at Tele2 Arena were a small minority of what is, in the main, a passionate and peaceable supporter culture.
Swedish football at its best is the packed Strawberry Arena on derby day, the 48,500 sold-out tickets, the commuter train to Uppsala full of Hammarby fans, the tifo unveilings and the supporter songs that carry all the history of a club.
The scandals are the other side of that coin. They matter because they happened. They do not define what the game is.
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Sources: SVT Sport, Aftonbladet, Expressen, Fotbollskanalen, Fotbollsthlm, Fotbolldirekt, GP, Nyheter24, Swedish Football Association, Stockholm District Court, Södertälje Municipality.