Haecken – Hammarby

In Gothenburg, the rivals will trade goals

Since Häcken's first-ever Swedish championship title in 2022, season after season Häcken has been finishing in lower positions. The team dropped from first to third, then to eighth, and finally, in the most recent Allsvenskan season, to tenth. Meanwhile, unlike many other clubs in Sweden's top division, the Wasps have a stable intra-club system that keeps them in Allsvenskan for the eighteenth straight season. Thus last year's tenth place closely resembled the team's nadir. The start of the current season has borne this out. Ahead of the tenth matchday, the Wasps sit third on 17 points, level with Elfsborg and the upcoming opponent. For Hammarby, this situation, unlike Häcken, is not a reason for pride. In the previous season the capital club finished as runners-up in Sweden. For the current football year the coaching staff and players of Hammarby saw only one possible goal: winning the championship trophy. Experts, journalists and bookmakers at the very start of the season (after Malmö's two early missteps) shared the capital club's ambition, granting it the status of the sole Allsvenskan favorite. However, Sirius suddenly began tearing the division apart, which turned out to be far from the last trouble for Hammarby in the first half of the season. There is no doubt the visitors will travel to Gothenburg for three points, but are they capable of achieving such a result? Bookmakers figured yes, listing the visitors as match favorites with a win odds of 2.13. Häcken, before the tenth round, is one of two division clubs that have not yet lost this season. The Wasps last season split the season between participating in the Conference League and Allsvenskan, which negatively affected results in both tournaments. Now Häcken does not face such a pleasant difficulty and is steadily collecting points in every round of the championship. Hammarby in mid-May fell apart openly. It all started with a defeat in the Swedish Cup final to Mjällby, and by the Gothenburg match the club was on a mini-run of defeats to GAIS and AIK. Hammarby, surely, plans to play on the front foot, but that plays into Häcken's hands. The Wasps are the only team not to have lost to the formidable Sirius (2-2), so there is a high likelihood of both teams scoring.