Ex-Subway striker Bergstrom scores on Champions League debut
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- Jacob Bergstrom, 31, worked at Subway as recently as 2018 while playing amateur football, only turning full-time professional at 24 — and has since scored on his Champions League debut for Mjallby.
- Mjallby AIF won the Swedish championship and Swedish Cup last season for the first time in the club's 87-year history, advancing past Lincoln Red Imps 3-0 in the Champions League second qualifying round.
- The club is based in Hallevik, a coastal Swedish village of fewer than 1,000 residents and the second smallest settlement to ever host a Champions League fixture, after Streymnes in the Faroe Islands (population 321).
- Yaya Toure, who won the 2009 Champions League final with Barcelona at Rome's Stadio Olimpico, faces Mjallby in Tuesday's first leg after taking charge of 24-time Slovakian champions Slovan Bratislava in June — his first managerial post.
- Captain Jesper Gustavsson, 31, is the last surviving member of the Mjallby squad that avoided relegation to the fourth tier — and probable bankruptcy — on the final day of the 2016 season.
- Bergstrom still cycles to training at Strandvallen, a ground 100 metres from the Baltic Sea, where 3,500 fans were joined by a jazz band and another 2,300 watched on a big screen at Hallevik's marina for the Lincoln Red Imps tie.
Why it matters: Even a loss to Slovan Bratislava drops Mjallby into the Conference League, guaranteeing European matchday revenue for a club from a village of under 1,000 that nearly went bankrupt in 2016. Toure's first managerial test comes against a striker who was making sandwiches at Subway four years ago — and a captain who personally dragged the club back from the fourth tier.
