A group of children are huddled around the entrance to the tunnel at the Tele2 Arena in Stockholm. Djurgardens have beaten Elfsborg 2-0 in the Swedish top flight and the youngsters are trying to catch a glimpse of Lucas Bergvall.
When their tall blond hero breaks away from his team-mates and strides towards them, all composure is lost. Everybody starts asking for selfies and autographs. The midfielder pauses to speak to them all and, when he finally heads towards the dressing room, Djurgardens’ sporting director Bosse Andersson drags him back to point out another crop of supporters who are behind the manager’s dugout.
Bergvall complies with every request, eager to please his fans who have copied his floppy haircut and are closer to him in age than he is to most of his team-mates.
In the week leading up to his 18th birthday in February, Bergvall hopped on private jets between Barcelona and London as two of the biggest clubs in Europe fought for his signature. The teenager and his family dined in plush restaurants, were followed by paparazzi and switched cars in an underground garage in scenes perhaps more at home in a Martin Scorsese film.
After a breathless few days, he rejected an offer from Barcelona and decided to join Tottenham Hotspur on a five-year contract in a deal worth £8.5million ($10.8m). He signed the contract on his birthday and celebrated by going out to eat in London with his parents and Tottenham’s technical director Johan Lange.
During the negotiations, Bergvall made it clear he wanted to remain with Djurgardens until the summer. Now there are only two fixtures left before he packs his bags, moves to north London and switches his focus on becoming a first-team star at Spurs under coach Ange Postecoglou.
The Athletic flew to Stockholm last week to see why there is so much excitement about a youngster who has made less than 60 senior appearances.
To reach Djurgardens’ training ground, you need to hop on the number 69 bus from outside Stockholm Central train station.
Stockholm is a city spread across 14 islands that sit between Lake Malaren and the Baltic Sea. During the 20-minute bus journey, you can spot the spire of the Nordic Museum and a small fortress on the islet of Kastellholmen. The bus stops at the bottom of a winding road, and the city’s 560ft (170m) Kaknas Tower landmark can be spotted over the trees.
If you follow the bend in the road, you will eventually find a small cluster of cabins, a tyre swing, a basketball court and an astroturf pitch.
Djurgardens are one of the biggest and most successful clubs in Sweden but this is their training ground, a facility which they share with the Kaknas Seafarer’s Center. The place feels more like a camping retreat than the home of the eight-time winners of the Swedish title.
Djurgardens’ training ground, as shared with Kaknas Seafarer’s Center (Jay Harris/The Athletic)
This is where The Athletic has come to meet Bergvall but, 24 hours earlier, we were introduced to his parents at the stadium before kick-off against Elfsborg.
His father Andreas played football semi-professionally in Sweden while his mother Malin represented Djurgardens’ women’s team for three years. Bergvall’s maternal grandmother, Lillemor, was a goalkeeper who played until the age of 48. His older brother Theo is his team-mate at Djurgardens, while his younger brother Rasmus is with Brommapojkarna (known locally as BP), another Stockholm club.
“He was always, not in love, but very attached to football, so it’s been natural for him from the start,” Andreas tells The Athletic. “Other families go skiing or on vacation, we just played football for fun. There’s a pitch next to where Malin’s parents live in the countryside.
“We played there and Lucas always cried when he didn’t win. We put him on this little hill and called it ‘the crying hill’. When he calmed down, he could come back. He likes to compete and he likes to win, but it’s not just football. When we play board games or cards, he always finds some explanation if he doesn’t win.”
Bergvall believes playing with his brothers helped his development. “We were always competing against each other in the garden and trying to get better every day,” he says. “I hate to lose but now I can control it more. When I was young I would throw and punch things I was so mad.”
Bergvall joined Brommapojkarna’s academy when he was six. The club have a reputation for developing talent — his future Spurs team-mate Dejan Kulusevski, Sporting Lisbon forward Viktor Gyokeres and Spurs Women defender Amanda Nilden all started their careers there. Nilden’s younger brother, Charlie, grew up with Bergvall and is one of his closest friends. Bergvall’s first game as a child was against Stockholm’s AIK and he scored a hat-trick in a 5-2 win.
Peter Kisfaludy is Djurgarden’s sports co-ordinator and previously worked for Brommapojkarna. He held a variety of roles across nearly three decades with them, including as a coach and academy director. “I first met Lucas in November 2015, when he was nine, and I trained him for four and a half years,” Kisfaludy tells The Athletic. “He was so blonde in the winter, his hair was white going out onto the pitch. He had technique, pace with the ball, was good in one-v-ones and he was scanning all the time.
“The best thing was he loved to train. When training finished and his team had lost, he would cry and ask to play more. He would come to training the next day and say, ‘I’m going to win.’ I love that mentality and you need it if you’re going to play in the Premier League.”
As Bergvall progressed through BP’s academy, word was spreading. He became a star on social media thanks to video compilations and a YouTube channel which followed the team at the Madrid Cup tournament in November 2019. Andreas Engelmark, who was BP’s academy director at the time and is now a first-team coach following two years in the United States working with MLS side Columbus Crew’s youth programme, had regular meetings with Bergvall’s family about “trying to stay patient”.
Andreas and Malin Bergvall, both former footballers (Jay Harris/The Athletic)
“He was the one who probably had the most attention in Swedish football when he was a kid,” Engelmark says. “The most important thing is to stay calm, keep working and enjoy the game, because when you are 10 there is still a long way to go to reach the professional level.”
Bergvall captained BP’s under-13s to a 2-0 victory over Atletico Madrid in the final of the Madrid Cup and footage of the game has nearly a million views on YouTube. They had beaten a Paris Saint-Germain side, which included future France international Warren Zaire-Emery, 3-0 in the quarter-finals and eliminated Bayern Munich too. Bergvall’s parents were constantly being approached by agents and clubs who wanted to know more about their son.
“When you see him every day, it’s easier to see the flaws and things he needs to improve,” Andreas says. “It’s so difficult to reach the top level. We have been realistic, but we saw his skill. He won the player of the tournament award at the Madrid Cup and that’s the point I understood he was something special.”
“Everybody was coming up to me asking for his phone number and big clubs wanted to invite him for trials,” Kisfaludy, 58, says. “A month before the Madrid Cup, we played a tournament in Croatia and we beat Sparta Prague in the final, 2-0. We beat Dinamo Zagreb 1-0 in the quarter-final in one of the best games I have ever seen at that age level. Lucas received a pass, dribbled past their full-back and got the assist for us to win.
A 12-year-old Bergvall – already on the trophy trail (Andreas Bergvall)
“There were 16 teams, and before the final every coach was asked which player they thought was the best in the tournament. I couldn’t vote for my own player, so 14 out of 15 wrote down Lucas Bergvall’s name. Dinamo Zagreb’s coach said there could only be one winner — the No 10 blond Swedish kid.”
Bergvall was unstoppable in 2019 and helped BP win a tournament in Italy too, but a year later doubts started creeping in for the first time. “He grew 13cm (five inches) in 2020,” Andreas says. “He was growing into his body and people said, ‘What’s going to happen here?’. He had a tough year, and that was good for him to not take anything for granted and work hard.”
By 2021 he was back on track and, in the November, BP were preparing for the final game of their season. They had been confirmed as champions of the third tier and Kisfaludy told the first-team coaching staff it was time for Bergvall to make his debut at 15.
“He was on the bus and he was going to play with the under-19s,” mum Malin says. “The coach said, ‘Lucas, you’re going with the senior team to Pitea. Go to the airport now’.”
Pitea is located in the north-east of Sweden and it takes just over an hour to fly there from Stockholm. It was the middle of winter and temperatures were minus-10C (14F). Bergvall recalls being freezing cold on the bench, patiently waiting to see if he would play. He came on for the final minutes.
“We watched on TV and he received the ball in the right corner,” says Andreas, who was unable to attend due to the last-minute nature of the call-up. “Everyone was pressing him, so he dribbled into his own penalty area past a few players and we were like, ‘Oh my God.’ Then he found a perfect pass across the pitch with his left foot. It was a day to remember.”
Bergvall returned to the under-19s after that but the coaching staff could not resist permanently promoting him into the first-team squad for much longer. He went on to play 11 times in the second division the following season, as BP secured back-to-back promotions.
“He was very mature,” Engelmark says. “We gave him instructions defensively and he followed them. With the ball, he has good movement and it’s difficult to take from him. I knew he was going to leave.”
In September 2022, Kisfaludy left BP to join Djurgardens. Convincing his new club to sign Bergvall was top of his agenda but it was an expensive deal for an unproven talent who had only made 12 senior appearances.
A young Bergvall with Kisfaludy at Brommapojkarna (Peter Kisfaludy)
“Bosse (Andersson), the sporting director, knew Lucas, but he’s a small kid,” Kisfaludy says. “I told Bosse, ‘We need to sign him now’, and he said, ‘Take it easy’. Brommapojkarna wanted €1million and Bosse said, ‘We cannot buy him because it’s too much money. We have never paid that for a player and Peter, you want me to pay €1m for a 16-year-old?’. So I told him I can buy Lucas myself.
“Bosse goes to his desk, starts typing away and after two minutes asks, ‘Are you really sure?’. Yes. Then he goes back to his desk and does it again. After the third time, he called BP and the deal was done.”
Djurgardens also signed Bergvall’s brother Theo as part of the deal and they officially moved in January 2023. Dutch side Feyenoord and Denmark’s Midtjylland had shown interest in Bergvall, so why did he opt to stay in Sweden? “I don’t think he was ready to go,” Malin says. “Djurgardens was a good step for him.”
“He was really young,” Andreas adds. “It’s totally different now, as he is more self-confident. The important thing for us was that it was a club or environment for him that he would have the best possibilities to develop and it was his choice.”
“A lot of players like to go to Europe when they get the chance but I started to play for BP’s first team and I wanted to do it that way,” Bergvall says. “Djurgardens felt like a good next step to get more senior football. I’ve developed a lot here, physically and mentally.”
Thomas Lagerlof and Kim Bergstrand, Djurgardens’ joint head coaches, were patient with Bergvall. The intensity of training was a big step up and their stadium holds up to 30,000 fans, compared to BP’s ground, which has a maximum capacity of 5,000. The scrutiny and pressure on Bergvall were building. The then 17-year-old made eight substitute appearances before he was trusted to start for the first time in the league against Hacken, who were the champions, on May 24 last year.
“In that game, he played against Simon Gustafson, who played for the (Sweden) national team, and Mikkel Rygaard (who won the Swedish top flight’s midfielder of the year award in 2022), and I’m thinking, ‘Oh s**t’,” Kisfaludy says. “But Lucas was so good. He was starting to grow.”
Lagerlof was more impressed by his performance in a Swedish cup tie against Malmo two months before. “In the first half, he was too slow and you could see it was a new level for him,” Lagerlof says. “After half-time, he came out and he adapted to the higher tempo. He was fantastic.
“He could still have this childish behaviour that he wanted to show how good he was. He is one of those exceptional players who needs a lot of freedom, but he must work with his team-mates, find the simple solutions and wait for the right moments to do the difficult stuff. Since last autumn, he has been improving all the time.”
Thomas Lagerlof has been coach of Djurgadens since 2018 (Jay Harris/The Athletic)
“I always want the ball at my feet,” Bergvall says. “I like to find solutions, to take the ball forward, play my team-mates in good positions and take risks to score. Maybe sometimes you lose the ball, but that’s to help the team.”
Bergvall made his debut for Sweden’s senior team in a friendly against Estonia in January. His performances for club and country attracted interest from clubs across Europe, including Eintracht Frankfurt, Newcastle United, Barcelona and Spurs. The latter’s Lange, who is from Denmark, made contact with Bergvall’s camp in December and flew over to Stockholm in January, with chief scout Rob Mackenzie, for a meeting.
“We have been like a filter,” his mother says. “We kept a lot from him. There were so many things going on that we didn’t think it was best to tell him how much interest there was. We only told him about teams that were serious and made an offer.
“Spurs had a really good presentation. They seemed to really know him and could explain and show a lot of clips why they wanted to use him. They knew what his strengths and weaknesses were. It was not just a selling pitch.”
Bergvall was invited to visit Tottenham’s training ground a couple of weeks later, where he met Postecoglou and club chairman Daniel Levy.
When you drive into Spurs’ facility, there are crisp pitches on your left-hand side. Bergvall was impressed by their quality and could not wait to play on them, until he was told they were for the academy teams.
The Bergvalls were tempted to accept Tottenham’s offer straight away but they flew on to Barcelona to hear a proposal from their sporting director, former Barca and Portugal midfielder Deco. A few days before, the Spanish club’s head coach Xavi had announced he would step down at the end of the season — a decision which he went on to reverse last month.
“We were eating in the mountains with Deco, we looked outside and there were 150 people trying to get in,” Bergvall says. “We got into a taxi, drove into the city and they were following us. We got into a garage and switched cars.
“It was a crazy day. I came home and needed to decide, but my gut feeling was always Tottenham. They play really good football and it’s fun to watch. Ange is doing a great job. When you’re looking at the team you feel like they’re going to new areas and are starting to build something.”
“The last week of his transfer was a circus,” Andreas says. “It’s surreal. The whole situation with having a son that many clubs want to sign is hard to get a grip on. It was sometimes hard to sleep: What should he do? You want him to succeed, but he’s also 17 and you feel like they are pulling him away from you and he’s going to split the family. It was hard to cope with.
“When he made the decision, it felt right for him and it felt right for us.”
Introducing Lucas Bergvall 🤍 pic.twitter.com/dloaT26Taf
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) February 2, 2024
Bergvall returned to Sweden when the deal with Spurs was completed. He wanted to finish school but ended up dropping out due to the difficulty of juggling his studies with building a football career.
He has made 16 appearances in all competitions this season for Djurgardens and in February picked the ball up inside his own half, ran the length of the pitch and scored in a 5-0 victory over Nordic United in the Swedish Cup. “It’s a fantastic goal and that’s what great players do,” Lagerlof says.
Bergvall started in the final of that competition three weeks ago, but Djurgardens lost on penalties to Malmo. Last Thursday, he registered an assist in a 5-0 win against BP and produced a clever backheel in the build-up to their second goal. The extra attention from his move to England has not impacted his performances.
“That impressed me from the beginning, that he was so down to earth with all this attention,” Lagerlof says. “I was worried it was going to be tough. The first day he came back from signing for Tottenham, at our training camp in Gran Canaria (before the Swedish domestic season began in March), it was like this period had passed. He was 100 per cent focused in every training. It’s never been a problem.”
Bergvall’s parents are taking a sabbatical from their jobs as an IT consultant and in banking to help Lucas settle in London and take care of their other sons back in Sweden. They have found him an apartment near the training ground and will move his belongings over in June. Pre-season starts in July, and then Bergvall will go with Postecoglou’s first team on tour to Japan and South Korea.
“It’s a five-year contract but we talked about this as a two-year project,” Andreas says. “He has to be patient, listen and adapt. I don’t think he expects to play right away but he will do everything in his power to do that.”
Two and a half years ago, Bergvall was playing in the Swedish third tier.
Given his rapid career progress, do not be surprised to see him shining for Postecoglou’s team in the Premier League before long.
(Top photo: Emma Wallskog/BILDBYRÅN/AP)
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