STOCKHOLM - Swedish minnows Mjallby are on the brink of one of the greatest upsets in the country’s soccer history, set to clinch the top-flight title this weekend after a season built on academic-inspired playing principles used to outwit richer rivals.

Mjallby are 11 points clear of second-placed Hammarby from Stockholm in the Allsvenskan with five games left to play, and a win at home to Elfsborg on Saturday would leave Hammarby needing to beat a resurgent IFK Gothenburg on Sunday to keep the title race alive. 

The tiny village of Hallevik where the team plays its home games has a population of less than 1000 people, but the club's Strandvallen ground is capable of taking in more than six times that number as fans from all over the county of Blekinge stream there to watch them. 

It's certainly not easy for a club of Mjallby's size to compete with the likes of Hammarby and Malmo, with the latter having several years of money from playing in the group stages of European competitions to spend. 

"I think we have the 11th or 12th-highest wage budget in the league. We don't have the big wages, we can't pay a lot of money for transfer fees, so you have to work with what you've got," assistant coach Karl Marius Aksum, who holds a doctorate from the Norwegian School of Sports Science in Oslo, told Reuters. 

The Norwegian-born coach says the club scouts from the lower levels in Scandinavia, looking for diamonds in the rough that can be polished into top-class players, and what they lack in financial muscle is more than made up for by their tactical and academic approach to the game.

Aksum gained his doctorate by studying visual perception in elite football, and his research into the game led to him writing a 500-page document that has become the club's footballing bible as they dispensed with patterns of play and started focusing on principles instead. 

GAME-LIKE SITUATIONS

"We create guidelines, and then hopefully we work on them enough in game-like situations that we can play fluid football the way we want to. But I w...