Viktor Gyokees adapts to an unknown environment in Arsenal, but he shares common land with two of his new neighbors in North Londs. Just like Tottenham's Dejan Kulusevski and Lucas Bergvall, he is a product of as a Brommapojkarna.
Gyokees, Kulusevski and Bergvall are leading graduates from their youth arrangement, but there are hundreds more spread across the continent. This small Swedish club, which has difficulty filling a stadium of 5,000 capacity, would have the largest academy in Europe.
“We don't really have fans,” sports director Philip Berglund tells Sky Sports. It is quite the opening gambit. “Our stadium is very small, ticket income is pretty bad and it is difficult to compete commercially, because the larger clubs in Stockholm take all sponsors.”
Instead, Brommapojkarna shamelessly concentrates their efforts on one thing and one thing: the development of young players who can be sold for as much money as possible. “Everything we do is built to generate income through transfers,” adds Berglund.
This includes having a vast network of young players.
From the age of eight they have about as many Academy players as they are in their Grimsta IP stadium. Most of the games for affiliated grassroots -sides, where they get Brommapojkarna coaching and compete for places in the 'Prestige teams' at the club's head office.
Those teams usually dominate their domestic competitions. “In the highest U17 competition of Sweden, for example, we currently have one team in first place and another in second place,” says Berglund. They also beat prestigious opponents in continental tournaments routinely.
The aim is for the best of the best to rise by winning the youth of the club and ultimately to win exposure to the first team, and therefore Brommapojkarna officers celebrated when, after they had previously been bounced between divisions, a club record in the Sweden in the Allsvenskan-top-fightertan in the Sweden last year.
“Of course we want to improve our first team and end up as high as possible in the table, but that is not the main goal,” says Berglund. “The main goal to establish ourselves in the Allsvenskan is that we can put many young players on the field at the highest level to increase their value.”
That in turn helps Berglund to fulfill his assignment when he arrived from Hammarby in 2022, one of the three larger clubs in the Swedish capital together with Aik and Djurgardens.
“I arrived in the year that we came from the Second Division with the main goal of selling players for more money than the club had done earlier,” explains Berglund.
“It now helps to be in the top division, because we can sell directly to large European clubs instead of selling to other clubs in Sweden, which we have done before.”
Bergvall and Arrhov -Sales shows progress
Bergvall, once an appreciated academy product in Brommapojkarna, is an example of this. The club insured a clause of 20 percent when they sold him to Djurgarden three years ago, but it was their rivals that benefited the most when he came to Tottenham for £ 8.5 million last summer.
“When we sold Lucas, we had just promoted,” says Berglund. “He only passed on his contract for a year, so we needed a deal with a good sales clause for him to become a member of a top team in Sweden who wins three zero and four-zero many matches and can just apply young players.
“Compare that at the time with us, we had to fight for every match to get the points to say in the division, so the circumstances were not ideal for young players to really shine.”
Gyokeres, who later came to the Academy of Brommapojkarna Dan Bergvall, 14 years old, from another small club in Stockholm called IFK Asphuiden-Tellus, was another case, since he was sold directly to a European team in Brighton, to England in 2018.
But the reimbursement, for a player who was now appreciated with a value of more than £ 60 million, was modest on less than £ 1 million, partly because Gyokeres had not had the chance to prove himself in the top division with Brommapojkarna, who played in the third and second rows of Sweden at the time of his first team.
Fast forward to now and the advantage that they settled in the upper layer of Sweden-Brompojkarna was on the 14th in the season after their promotion to 10th previous term and now ninth sitting in the club record sale of the 17-year-old midfielder Love Arrh to Eintracht Frankfurt announced in May.
In the stable conditions of mid-table, ARHOV was able to shine for Brommapojkarna, where Frankfurt not only agrees to pay compensation that could reach an eight-digit territory in euros if add-ons is reached, but postponing his arrival until January, which keeps his boys' club an important player from March.
The profit from his sale, explains Berglund, will be reinvested in the club's youth activities. “It is really important for the club that when we sell someone, we don't use all that money to buy older first team players. Instead, we reinvest the entire club and the base.”
That investment is the key, but the productivity of their academy is at least partially due to the enormous part of the registered players. They have set up a monopoly about young talent in the Stockholm region who had been one of the first clubs in Scandinavia to start academiet teams for players as young as eight.
The quality of the coaching and football training offered is of course a different factor. The club is also careful to ensure coordination between their academy and senior parties. Their U17 and U19 coaches double as assistants of the first team to help players make the step.
Their success has made them a hugely attractive destination for young players. “If you are the best player of your age in Stockholm, you always always want to play for Bromma,” says Berglund.
But their methods have also asked questions in the country.
An 'unreachable dream' or a path to follow?
In 2019, the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet, established in Stockholm, published a series of articles in which journalist Patrik Brenning revealed that many parents paid disproportionately high costs to register their children at the club and to access extra services such as specialized coaching and training camps.
“The idea is that it can help their children play their dream to play in the Allvekan, the Premier League or for the Swedish national team,” Brenning tells Sky Sports, “but the reality is that so little of them will do that, what raises the question, is it fair to sell a dream that you know is unreachable?”
Brommapojkarna can point out of their part to a long list of players who have taken it from their academy to the highest level, with the Frankfurt-bound Arrh only the newest example.
In addition to Gyokees, Kulusevski and Bergvall, the club has former Arsenal-Vleugel player Anders Limpar, former Manchester City and Celta Vigo striker John Guidetti and ex-Juventus and Sampdoria midfielder Albin Ekdal among their high-profile graduates.
But the percentages are of course disappearingly small, as they are for academic players in England and throughout Europe. The club does recognize the problems that Brenning has been raised.
“We now have a ceiling about how many parents can pay every year and the total cannot get over it,” says Berglund. “All our teams also have their own bank accounts, so if they want to go to extra tournaments or things like that, they have to find sponsors to pay.
“We never want a family not to be here to be here. It is really important for us that everyone who wants to play football can play football. Of course our players do not all come from rich families, so we also take responsibility to sponsor specific players.”
Brommapojkarna was considered trail blazers in Youth Development in Sweden, but they are far from the only club that is now trying to generate winning by players with a high potential as a priority.
Brenning compares the Scramble to recruit the best talents in Stockholm to a “Armrace”. In May Alexander Andersson, a player poached from Brommapojkarna by Djurgardens, established a record as the youngest player who appears in the Allsvenskan in 15 years and 24 days old.
Some in the country believe that the priority given to young talents over experienced players take a toll from the national team. Despite a growing number of clubs that develop better, or at least more salable, young players, Sweden only qualified for one of the last four major tournaments.
However, the success stories will continue to come for Brommapojkarna.
They have secured a record-breaking windfall by Arrhov, but he is not the only member of their current side who has attracted interest, with the 19-year-old striker Ezekiel Alladoh, so far from four goals of four goals, is also expected to have a great fee.
In Gyokeres and his new neighbors Kulusevski and Bergvall in Noord -Londen, she and the many thousands of other young players in the books of Brommapojkarna have their inspiration.
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