Welcome! Let’s dive a bit deeper into what’s happening at Kiruna FF.

Club Overview

Kiruna FF find themselves in Division 2 Norrland, Sweden’s 4th tier. As a semi-professional club, Kiruna don’t much going on in terms of infrastructure. Kiruna currently have poor training and youth facilities, and fairly basic corporate facilities. In terms of youth, we’re also limited with basic academy coaching and limited youth recruitment.

The club will playing their matches at Lombia IP. The stadium is in poor conditions as it was built back in 1976, it currently hosts a capacity of 2,300 (1,500 seats). As mentioned in last post, building a new stadium is a priority. The club has 95 season ticket holders and 795 social media followers so promotion to Ettan Fotboll Division 1 Norra is a must if we are to going more fans. Something I failed to mentioned in the last post is that I will be keeping track of season ticket holders, social media followers, and average attendance as we progress through the football leagues.

Financially, the club has £10,010 in the bank and it’s projected to have a positive balance in the next two years. Kiruna has two sponsors for a total of £28,000 p/y, in addition to sponsors, the club membership (573 members) accumulates to £20,000 p/y. The wage budget is of £13,000 per year but I am sure that this will be hard to maintain as we need better players if we are to gain promotion.

Squad

I won’t be putting you through too much information about the current team. The majority of these players won’t be around for too long. Instead, I’ll just highlight the players that I think will stay at the club for more than two seasons. The goal is to find the right replacements this season to be able to compete.

Defense

The standout in central defense is Ayodeji Abayomi. Abayomi is a new signing from fellow Div 2 Norrland club, Bergnäsets AIK. Emil Björnström will partner with Abayomi in central defense. He has been at the Kiruna his whole career and is a leader in the squad. Their understudy will be August Niemi. Niemi is one of the two academy players that I will try to develop.

Brendan Nanuseb and Wille Sörensen will start at right-back and left-back, respectively. Although I doubt that they will be good enough to play higher up the leagues, they are both academy graduates and are influential members of the squad.

Midfield

The same as our defense, our midfield is in need of new players. At least we can tackle. 😅 

Tobias Stridsman is the son of IRL manager, Hans Stridsman, and the nephew of the current chairman, Tommy Stridsman. Tobias is Kiruna through and through. He is also the captain of the club. I will do my best to keep Tobias around as long as possible.

Elias Johansson is the second highly rated youth player at the club. He’s been promoted to the first team alongside August Niemi. Elias has the potential to be better than Stridsman according to my coaching team.

Forwards

An American and English walk into a bar… jk, I don’t have any jokes about Americans and English men. (Feel free to leave them in the comments) Anyways… Our forwards are not as bad as the players behind them. If the midfielders are able to supply them with opportunities, I am sure that they’ll put the ball in the back of the net.

Gibson Bardsley joined for the club back in 2017, and has now been at the club for 5 seasons. His partner up top will be Adam Johnson (no, not that Adam Johnson). Johnson is back at the club after playing for Kiruna for two seasons. I am hoping he matches his previous efforts at the club of 39 goals in 40 matches back in 2017 & 2018 seasons.

Key Players

Abayomi, Johnson, and Stridsman are clearly the best players are the club. I will try to build a team around them. Let’s see how what formations and roles they will be playing in.

Tactics

My only goal in terms of tactic for the save is to use a AMC through out the entirety of the save. The above formations are the two that I will sticking to. As for team instructions, it will be more of the same as I’ve done in the past – Shorter Passing, Countering, and Pressing More Often. 

I do understand that I need to be flexible in the style of play. Whether I go long to the Target Forward, counterplebe more direct, or slowing down the tempo of the game. My aim is to do what I need to win the match regardless of the style of play.

Next up will be a review of the 2022 season. Thanks again for making it all the way down here. Also, thanks to @fm_throwing for the way he analyzes his teams. You’ve “inspired” to do something similar.

Best,
José