ELFSBORG'S recent renaissance gives the lie to the notion you can't cement football progress with bricks and mortar. The Swedish side that Hibernian will face at Easter Road in the second round of the Intertoto Cup next Sunday moved into new stadium the Boras Arena in 2005.
By the end of Elfsborg's second season there, the country's newest and most modern football ground was housing the league champions – the 2006 success ending a 45-year wait for the club to add to their haul of four Allsvenskan titles.
As his team
returned to pre-season training this week, Hibs manager Mixu Paatelainen stressed the "priority" over a month-long period that will also bring games against Barcelona, Middlesbrough and Wigan Athletic was ensuring his team would be ready for the start of the league season.
If that sounded suspiciously like getting the excuses in early, the tone might be forgivable. There are good grounds to be pessimistic about the Leith club's attempts to use the Intertoto Cup as a springboard to the UEFA Cup.
Elfsborg lie second in the Allsvenskan, having lost only one of their 11 games. The goal they conceded in the 4-1 win away to Torshavn in the first leg of their Interto Cup tie last weekend was the first they had conceded in six games.
A similar-sized club to their Leith opponents, they drew an average home gate of 11,866 in finishing fourth in the league last year. That campaign brought a tilt at the Champions League that Valencia abruptly ended with a 5-1 aggregate win.
Elfborg boast an experienced squad, with Anders Svensson probably their best known performer. A regular in the Swedish national side for almost a decade, the midfielder played every minute of his country's group games in the Austria and Switzerland championships and is closing in a 100 caps. Johan Wiland was the only other Elfsborg player in the squad for Euro 2008, the 27-year-old being third-choice goalkeeper for his country.
The 1980s marked the start of a grim time for Elfsborg, and not because Scots Billy Davies and Kenny Burns had spells with them. The club dropped out of the top flight in 1988 and then endured an nine-year exile from it. The current decade has been the flipside of that. Swedish Cup success in 2001 and 2003 and the UEFA Cup football those triumphs secured raised profits that were ploughed in to new facilities. Hibs chairman Rod Petrie would surely approve.
The full article contains 428 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
