Sunday 16th June 2024 ko 10:30

Stockholm P2008- 1A

VASALUND IF III 1 (Almqvist 71)

AIK SOLNA FK I 7 (Hammarin 21 76 Lööw 30 40 50 Henareh 42 84)

Att 29 at Skytteholms IP Plan B

Free Entry

The Swedish Hop’s cost of £320 included bed and breakfast for two nights, all transport in Sweden, together with entry fees for all games, and a goodie bag!

If one football ground could encompass what the Swedish Hop is all about you could say it’s Skytteholms. It’s in Solna close to where organiser Kim Hedwall lives in Stockholm’s northern suburbs. We visited the main pitch on the very first hop in 2007, then again in 2013, and on both occasions the facility was overshadowed by the Råsunda Stadium, where non-Brazilian fans first glimpsed Pele in the 1958 World Cup and AIK played their home games.

Sadly, and perhaps regretfully the Grand Old Lady of Stockholm is no more, and while the newly rebadged Strawberry Arena is fine home for the national team, it is far too big for AIK’s needs. But Skytteholms, or the Shooting Grounds if you’d like it in English has its own identity.

It was the first stadium in Sweden to get an artificial pitch, and then under-pitch heating. That fact Kim does tend to tell with a rueful smile. He used to be stadium announcer for Råsunda IS, and managed to use that position to leverage a seat for an AIK pre-season friendly on Plan A, the main pitch but there was a catch. It was in early February, and the temperature was -20c! He tells the tale as spending no more than the actual playing time in the ground, and the rest in the adjacent “Max” hamburger restaurant nursing a restorative coffee!

There have been other visits too. I remember watching AIK’s youth team in the pouring rain on Plan C back in 2008 when Kim and I’s notes ended up being little more than paper mache but we did see one player there, Magnus Eriksson play top-flight football later, for Åtvidaberg. Then as now we ended up heading to the Olympic Stadium afterwards for a Djurgårdens game which is where Eriksson now plies his trade!

We walked in passing by that Max, and not completely sure which pitch our game was allocated to. As ever with Skytteholms the poster on the clubhouse noticeboard tells all, and that’d I’d got lucky. Skytteholms has 3 full sized pitches, and this was to take place on the one pitch I hadn’t seen a game on. That will always raise even my eyebrow, how ridiculous is it that a bloke from Oxford has completed all the pitches at a suburban football ground in Sweden?

The two clubs were watching were oh-so appropriate for where we were. Vasalund’s men play at the main stadium in the third tier Ettan Norra, while as we arrived that was being readied for an AIK women’s game. A note for the footballing pedants, the AIK Solna team we saw here had the Solna suffix as they operate as a separate legal entity from AIK- the Municipal Sports Club- that play in the Allsvenskan. They are still one of many teams under the general AIK banner though, the giveaway being the black shirts and yellow and black socks! Nor should the casual observer worry about the numbers after the team names, the III suffix doesn’t mean they’re the 3rd choice, it merely reflects that they are one of many teams operating from the same club; see Brommapojkarna for details!

But that’s in danger of overexplaining it all. It really doesn’t need any more than just to say it was a pleasure to sit on a step of the bleachers and be gently entertained for an hour and a half. I took a few pictures, and relaxed.. It was just lovely.