Sören Åkeby

Sören Åkeby (born February 23, 1952 ) is a Swedish football coach . With Djurgårdens IF he won the Lennart Johansson Cup twice for the Swedish championship.

Career

Åkeby played in Hammarby IF's youth . In 1969 he won the Swedish championship title with the club's youth team at the side of Mats Werner , but did not make it into the first team afterwards. Therefore, he joined the lower-class Stockholm club Essinge IK , where he ended his active career in late 1979.

After the end of his career, Åkeby initially worked as an assistant coach at Essinge IK , with whom he rose to the third division in 1981. He then took up his first responsible coach position at Örby IS in 1982 , but returned to third division team Essinge IK in 1984 . In 1986 he took over the fourth division club Grondals IK , with whom he was relegated to the fifth division as a victim of a league reform. After the direct resurgence, he led the team to sixth place in their fourth division. He came to Djurgårdens IF in 1991 as a junior coach via Älvsjö AIK

In 1994 local rival AIK Åkeby recruited as an assistant coach for Hans Backe . Together they reached the final of the National Cup in 1995 with the team around Pascal Simpson , Magnus Hedman , Ola Andersson and Fredrik Espmark , in which Halmstads BK prevailed with a 3-1 win. During the year he left the club in the direction of Nacka FF . The third-rate club had just missed promotion to the second division in previous years, Åkeby led the team in 1996 with one point ahead of Sandvikens IF to the relay championship and thus to promotion. After a sixth place in the first season, the club finished ninth in the table in the following year. For the 1999 season he took over the third division side Östersunds FK , which had failed the previous year only in the promotion round to the second division against Gefle IF . With the team he dominated their third division season until the summer of 1999.

In July 1999 Djurgårdens IF recruited Åkeby from the third division team, as the first division team, which was supervised by the coaching duo Michael Andersson and Peter Grim , had slipped into the relegation battle during the 1999 season , and handed him responsibility for the team together with the former youth coach Zoran Lukić . With the team around Niclas Rasck , Lucas Nilsson , Stefan Alvén and Michael Borgqvist , the coaching duo missed relegation at the end of the season, but they stayed in office. The development work in the second division was successful and as the champions of the newly created single-track Superettan , the team managed to get promoted again, winning 20 of the 30 season games. The series of successes continued in the first division as well, in the duel with city rivals Hammarby IF and AIK for the Swedish championship title, the team with players like Stefan Rehn , Mikael Dorsin , Andreas Johansson and Jones Kusi-Asare took second place.

In the 2002 season , the team coached by Åkeby and Lukić dominated the league and sat six points ahead of runner-up Malmö FF at the top of the table. In addition, they moved into the final of the national cup, in which a goal by Louay Chanko to 1-0 win over AIK meant the first double win in the club's history. The team around Kim Källström , Johan Arneng , Andreas Isaksson , Geert den Ouden and Babis Stefanidis also retained their dominant position in the league in the following season, with second place Hammarby IF ultimately seven points behind.

After the championship title had been determined shortly before the end of the season, Åkeby announced that he wanted to leave the club for Denmark. At Aarhus GF he inherited Poul Hansen , under whose leadership the team ranked in the lower midfield. With the team around players like Stig Tøfting , Tobias Grahn , Helgi Sigurðsson , Leon Andreasen and Jeffrey Aubynn , however, he also did not get beyond midfield. After a mixed start to the 2005/06 season and ongoing speculation about a return to Sweden - he had met with officials at Malmö FF in Copenhagen, whose coach Tom Prahl had a contract that expired at the end of the season - he resigned in early October 2005 back. A short time later, the club officially introduced him as the new coach and he signed a three-year contract in Skåne. At Malmö FF Åkeby could not build on the success of his predecessor. Placed in the middle of the table, he made himself unpopular with the fans who demanded his resignation due to the team's uninspired appearances. In mid-September 2007 he agreed with the club's officials to go their separate ways at the end of the season.

At the beginning of 2008, Åkeby moved to Norway when he took over the coaching position at Aalesunds FK , where he met fellow countrymen Magnus Kihlberg , Mattias Nylund and Benjamin Kibebe . With the club he played in the back of the table. After four wins from the first 19 games of the 2009 season , which meant the penultimate place in the table before Ham-Kam , the club parted ways with him at the end of August.

After several months without a job, GIF Sundsvall signed Åkeby as a new coach in late November 2008. With his new employer he signed a three-year contract with an option for an additional season. With the first division relegated , he reached fifth place in the 2009 season , before he occupied the relegation place to Allsvenskan with the team in the following season. Against Gefle IF, however, the team missed promotion. At the same time, there was a dispute with Svenska Fotbollförbundet , who fined the coach after throwing a bottle in the game against Assyriska Föreningen , which the coach refused to pay.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ dif.se: "Djurgården byter tränare" ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on December 14, 2010) 
2. ↑ svt.se: "Sören Åkeby bryter med Århus" (accessed on December 14, 2010)
3. ↑ aftonbladet.se: "aftonbladet.se" (accessed on December 14, 2010)
4. ↑ sydsvenskan.se: "Åkeby ska träffa MFF-styrelsen" ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on December 14, 2010) 
5. ↑ mff.se: "Malmö FF och Sören Åkeby är överens om att inte förlänga kontraktet" ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on December 14, 2010) 
6. ↑ fotbollsverige.se: "Sören Åkeby klar för Ålesund" (accessed on December 14, 2010)
7. ↑ svd.se: "Sören Åkeby sparkas från Ålesund" (accessed December 14, 2010)
8. ↑ svenskafans.com: "Sören Åkeby klar för GIF" (accessed on December 14, 2010)
9. ↑ nyheter24.se: "Åkeby mot SvFF:" De tål inte kritik "" (accessed on December 14, 2010)