Bergström on the merger of Häcken with Gothenburg

All of Swedish football seems to have entered a saga

From: Kristoffer Bergström

Published: January 28, 2021 at 2:08 p.m.
Updated: January 28, 2021 at 2:24 PM

Häcken said a resounding yes, but there is something about the numbers that doesn’t leave me alone.

I’m afraid I’ve been misled.

And that you are too.

Happy Birthday. What did you say, BK Häcken FF? What a beautiful name you have chosen.

There will be a long reasoning soon, but we start with a top list of the three dumbest quotes from this soup:

3. “KGFC cancels elite investment.”

Headline on the club’s website on December 29.

2. “If the Häcken members vote no, unfortunately I see that the result will probably be a closure, that’s probably what I see.”

Häcken club coach Marcus Jodin on January 21.

“ITC’s sudden homelessness required someone to act with determination, speed and courage.”

Sportbladet Kristoffer Bergström Spinning Hat January 13th.

This is all a lie. We can split the hairs and stack euphemisms, call it speculation or half truths, but in pure Swedish they are false claims.

The bet is not canceled. Other sponsors were willing to open their wallets, other people could have entered the hermetically sealed meeting room. The choice was never between Häcken and hell, but between yellow-black and black shirts, between the skinny Bravida and the Spartan Valhalla.

I too was swept away

But that didn’t sound like that. They have fed us a story of doom and rebirth, not far from Aslan and Jesus and the Phoenix. The first chapters were written by Peter Bronsman with entourage and the ending was written by BK Häcken, meanwhile the dramaturgy was swallowed up by the media and more reported.

In fact, only 416 members remained to be persuaded.

I was also swept away and described a homelessness that never existed. I read too badly and I am fooled.

After today’s and yesterday’s voting, BK Häcken is the new great power of Swedish elite football, in the sense that no one else will match their combined results on the women’s and men’s side in 2021. Investments in the Swedish champions will elevate football in the region and will make it difficult for Rosengård’s chances of regaining the trophy. Children like Vittsjö will find it even harder to keep up.

Photo: DANIEL STILLER / BILDBYRÅN

This is neither good nor bad, if you ask me today. The players’ team is hoping for a smoother gym, more grass area and a more professional office, but the damallsvenskan has no clear reason to rejoice. It is fun that someone is hunting for Europe, but as on the male side, I refuse to sign that the existence of our national football depends on the distance to FC Barcelona.

Let’s say it wasn’t from Häcken, that the CCI had stayed and even had to shrink the suit two sizes in the absence of millions of cider. It had also worked. The league would be no less interesting. The national team had not lost significantly.

“Dirty our sport”

But I am not critical of the acquisition. It has its sides. The spooky thing is how a fictional story seems to have taken hold everywhere and in the end came to affect those who have the right to vote. I cannot understand landslide numbers 416-35 in any other way. It may be my own conspiratorial brain, but the answer seems too simple and unanimous to a complex question.

The day before the annual meeting, the Getingarna club weighed for and against:

“[Förslaget] it contradicts the fundamental principles of promotion and relegation in the league system based on the own achievements on which Swedish football has so far been based. These are values ​​that Swedish collective football fans rightly take great pride in at a time when the oligarchs and the Gulf states are devouring and dirtying football as a sport. Support is about being proud of your club in the dining room at work, it is about following a team you consider your own, and the lying proposition puts that value at great risk. We must not close our eyes to the fact that Häcken as an association and that the fans will receive huge spit from the rest of Swedish football if a proposal like this is approved. And we can’t deny that we as fans are now expected to cheer on and support a completely foreign team with whom we have so far had no relationship. A team that next year can win the club’s first league gold. Will it be with genuine joy and without dissimulation that we celebrate that gold? “

And so 416-35. Almost Belarusian figures.

This does not mean that the election has gone wrong. For example, many people listened to Question Time, voted early, and attended the digital meeting. But I wonder if they all had the correct information, if not the false notion of a tormented needy lady.

Would it have been the same result if the invention that it was a rescue operation had been removed? If the question were “Should Elin Rubensson and company continue to play in Valhalla or with us?” – Would you then be equally inclined to make such a large investment, to close the door to the existing women’s team, which cannot climb higher than Division 2 with the champions incorporated into the business?

I do not think so.

We can never determine each member’s motives, but we can take one thing with us. On December 31, two days after the alleged shutdown, we revealed at Sportbladet that the collaboration with Häcken was well underway. It was a time when Blåvitt and Öis still thought they had a chance to adopt the golden squad, when players still didn’t know if they were unemployed, when sports directors across the country were bombarded with text messages from agents offering stars of national teams.

Even in that situation, the clubs were linked and shared the same beliefs. Then snow fell under the bridges, opinions were expressed and annual meetings were planned.

But really, all that was left was to persuade 416 members.

Published: January 28, 2021 at 2:08 p.m.

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