See the images from the tough conditions in the player above.
Umeå IK won the Uefa Womens Cup, now Champions League, twice in 2003 and 2004, after several years of hard work and hard training.
The history of football
Hanna Ljungberg on the end of her career: “Not worth it at any price”
Tommy Svensson on the tough negotiation behind the professional contract: “Kept ruining my chances”
Despite the team playing in the highest league, it was the men’s team that got to choose the training times and the darkness played a decisive role as they had to play as long as they could see the ball. Sometimes the team was even forced to play in snow.
Frida Östberg talks about a memory:
– The football field was completely white. I had traveled eleven miles one way to be there and so we are thinking, should we screw it up or what should we do? It ends with the whole team running up a passing square that we should have, we trample the snow so we have a surface to play on.
Östberg, Malin Moström and Hanna Ljungberg were a constant trio during Umeå’s glory days and also a big part of the women’s national team’s progress with a WC silver in 2003 as the highlight.
Ljungberg says that there were some in the national team who were a little critical about how much the Umeå players trained. And of course there was a lot.
– You knew that everyone cheated when no one was looking to get a little, a little better. We weren’t competing against each other, but that was the attitude.
See the sixth episode of Football History, “The Secret Dream”, at SVT Play.