Gefle a breed apart in the Allsvenskan

The name of the Swedish top flight, Allsvenskan, implies that it is a league which covers "all of Sweden". However, while Stockholm and Gothenburg have four teams each and Skane has three, there is only one club in the top tier from the northernmost part of the country.

Rare breed
Gefle IF, from the town of Gavle, hail from the vast but sparsely populated region of Norrland. Gavle's ice hockey team, Brynäs IF, have always attracted the most attention from locals winning a total of 12 Swedish championships, but their stock has gone down in recent years at the same time as Gefle have put the town firmly on the Swedish footballing map. "It's important that there are teams from Norrland competing at the top level," 21-year-old Gefle midfielder Jonas Lantto told uefa.com. "It proves to the people up here - and in the rest of the country - that we can play good football here too, even though this is an ice hockey town."

Football first
Looking at a map of Sweden, Gavle is not even in the northern half of the country but it is definitely a part of Norrland, albeit the southern part. Lantto was born much further north, inside the Arctic Circle in the small town of Gallivare, and grew up in the even more northerly Kiruna. However, despite the strong traditions of winter sports in Norrland, football was always Lantto's first choice. "My dad coached football and my brother and sister played, so it was only natural for me to start playing," he said. "We're such a football family that I never went for hockey practice once - I can barely even skate."

Team spirit
Two years ago, Lantto left his hometown club, Kiruna FF, for Gefle and the Allsvenskan after establishing himself as a regular with Sweden at junior level. "Being selected for the Sweden juniors, that's when I realised that I could make a career out of football," Lantto said. "I could see for myself that I was just as good as players from bigger, established clubs." Gefle are in the middle of preparations for their fifth straight Allsvenskan season and, according to Lantto, his team has certain advantages over the others in the league. "We play as a team up here, more so than teams from the south," he said. "That team spirit carries Gefle a long way. It's a smaller town and a smaller club which means that we spend more time together even off the pitch than I imagine they do in Stockholm. I think that's a great asset."