Umeå vs Malmö: Two fallen giants trying to get back to the top

Umeå and Malmö were once the dominant sides in Swedish football. After various challenges over the years, they both sit near the top of the second division, closing in on a return to the top...

Malmö and Umeå were once Sweden’s top sides. Now they are fighting each other for promotion back to the Damallsvenskan.

Once upon a time, Umeå IK and Malmö FF were the great rivals of women’s football in Sweden.

Multiple domestic titles between them, as well as a couple of European Cups for Umeå, both played home many international superstars between them, including the legendary Marta.

Since then, both their fortunes have changed for the worse and they’ve converged down very different paths, now brought back together in the search of rekindling their former successes.

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Malmö became the team everyone knows today as FC Rosengård, the most successful club in the history of Swedish women’s football, while Umeå remains the same entity it was during it’s double European Cup winning days of 2003 and 2004, but has suffered multiple ups and downs since 2008, including near bankruptcy and several relegations.

While the former champions of the continent have bounced between the divisions, Malmö has reincarnated itself since 2019 and worked its way back up through the leagues, now back in the second tier and hot on the heels of its former rivals.

With 11 games gone in the current Elitettan season, Umeå sit second on 27 points and inside the automatic promotion spots, with Malmö just two points behind and chasing them down.

It’s not inconceivable both could be back in the Damallsvenskan in 2025, but between them lessons have been learned the hard way of how tough it is in the current landscape to get back to the top, safe in the knowledge different approaches will be needed for two teams who despite similar success and almost identical league positions, have very different resources to fall back on.

Malmö, the most successful men’s team in Sweden, with 23 league titles and 16 cup wins – as well as a European final – decided to bring back its own women’s team in 2019, with Daniel Andersson named as Sporting Director.

Now Sporting Director, Daniel Andersson was once one of Malmö’s longest serving players.

Andersson is a club legend, making over 300 appearances, as well as 74 Sweden caps, and has been tasked with returning the Malmö name to the Damallsvenskan, something they are closing in on.

“We got a team together from scratch and started playing,” says Andersson. “We had applications, trials, we build a team from that.”

So far, Malmö has been promoted in every season of its existence since 2019, but the final step will be toughest, though their aims are as lofty as their male equivalents.

“The aim is the same as we have with the men’s team – to be the best in Sweden,” he says, bullishly. “Then we want to go and compete in Europe as well, so that’s the aim. These years so far have been very, very successful, but we kind of counted on going up in every league, even if it’s still gone even better than expected because the results have been amazing.