In some parts of the world, Sweden is often confused with Switzerland. But this summer there will be no mistaking Swedish football fans as they descend on Switzerland for the Women’s European Championship bringing great colour as well as great noise. As ever, Soft Hooligans, a grassroots supporter group, is leading the line but this time there are more logistical issues to think about. “A major concern was how the ‘f’ we were going to get all our stuff down there,” says Caroline Gunnarsson, a Soft Hooligans member who will be driving the group’s campervan to Geneva, one which will be full to the brim with drums, megaphones, banners and flags.
Soft Hooligans was founded in 2017 after Estrid Kjellman returned from the Netherlands where she had watched the Euros with her family. She was impressed with the presence and passion of Dutch fans but was also taken aback by the lack of atmosphere in general. Used to the singing culture at men’s games in Sweden, Kjellman was inspired to change things.
“I felt really strongly that I wanted it to be just as fun to watch women’s football as it was to watch the Herrallsvenskan [the Swedish men’s top division],” Estrid says. “It was incredibly quiet [at Sweden games at the 2017 Euros] although we’ve got a national team that competes for and wins medals at practically every tournament.”
Back in Stockholm, Estrid created a Facebook group with the aim of getting people together for games involving the women’s national team and herself started taking a megaphone and banners to matches, joined by her mother Kajsa Aronsson and sister Miriam Kjellman. Soon they were meeting up with lots of people beforehand and regularly filling up standing sections.
The Facebook group Estrid setup now has more than 5,000 members, one of whom is Emma Holmqvist. “We’re not connected by formal structure but by the fact that we genuinely enjoy each other’s company,” says Holmqvist, who will be travelling to Switzerland with her nine-year-old daughter Klara for what will be the youngster’s first experience of following Sweden at a major tournament.
Supporting the women’s national team is a generational pursuit in Sven-Åke Svensson’s family and it runs deep, with his mother, Kerstin, a sewer of flags at the kitchen table that are then handed out to fellow supporters at games. “So far every flag has been returned every time,” Svensson says, somewhat surprised.
His brother, Per-Arne, is easy to pick out at Sweden Women games given he always brings a huge inflatable banana with him. He’s taking three to Switzerland, two as back-up. It will also be the first time Svensson’s daughter, Tilia Selldén,attends a tournament, underlying the deep generational passion that exists for women’s football within the Svensson family.
Soft Hooligans also like to display tifos at games and plan to do so again at the Euros, albeit with some trepidation given the inability to have any practise runs. “We’re always really nervous – how steep are the stands? How many fans will be able to help? Have we calculated the section width correctly?” says Kjellman.
Its largest effort to date is a 360 square-metre display featuring a portrait of Caroline Seger alongside the words “Forever our captain”. It was unveiled as a tribute to Seger at her farewell ceremony before Sweden’s match against Serbia in December, capping off an impressive 240 international appearances for the national team. The project took around 170 hours, with the painting requiring a team of 10 people working in shifts across two full days.
After the match, the sheet was cut up and repurposed for new banners. One such banner appeared at Sweden’s recent meeting with Denmark carrying the phrase “Pernille tar disken” – “Pernille does the dishes”, a playful nod to ongoing banter between Swedish centre-back Magdalena Eriksson and her fiancée, Danish striker Pernille Harder, the pair joking that the loser of their head-to-head clashes has to take on dish duty.
Soft Hooligans has developed a good working relationship with the Swedish Football Federation. Designated supporter liaison officers assist the group with practical matters, such as submitting banners for Uefa approval and arranging transport for tifos and flags to stadiums. The federation also provides financial support for banners and helps the group scout suitable gathering spots before matches, which is an essential part of the supporter experience.
“At the meet-up you get a chance to chat and connect,” says Svensson. “Then you go out singing in the march [to the stadium], showing the city that you’re coming. At the game it’s all about making noise and focusing on the game.”
After the most recent World Cup, Soft Hooligans faced mockery online over its name and was ridiculed for not following the so-called norms of supporter culture. “I think it can often be provocative when a group chooses to do something in a new way,” says Holmqvist. But it is not something that has kept the group back, and if anything it is getting bigger and stronger. There has been a record-breaking number of applications for tickets from Swedish fans for the Euros through the federation; a 70% increase compared to the 2022 tournament. For the group-stage matches alone, an average of 1,700 tickets have been requested, with many more fans expected to purchase tickets directly from Uefa.
“It feels more like a big group of friends,” says Holmqvist. “And the group just keeps growing.”
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