Football Season Guide

Varbergs needed the drama of the play-offs to stay in the top flight in 2022. They beat Osters 2:1 in both legs of their survival play-off after poor finish to the regular season, 3 defeats in the last 4 rounds, saw them collapse to 13th place right at the end. Varbergs have an extravagant manager in Joakim Persson. He’s been in charge since 2018 and Persson is known for trusting lots of young players, lots of Latin players and also rotating non-stop. Varbergs used 30 different starting line-ups in the 30 rounds last season. This explains why at the start of the new campaign Varbergs have a squad as large as 42 first-team players. After a turbulent 2022 Varbergs offloaded some fringe players. The most important player to leave was the versatile Boman, who was used often on the right flank in all kinds of roles. As is Persson’s style he shopped from all kinds of odd places to stack the squad again to a size of over 40 players, so predicting Varberg preferred line-up is all but pointless at this stage. The most interesting of the new signings is inner midfielder El Ouatki, who comes from PSG’s B side. Also, the army of Brazilian and Portuguese players in the squad makes Varberg one of the better technically sides. All of those players are very young though and it is yet to be seen if they will develop as Persson hopes. Frankly at this stage the Varberg don’t have a proven goalscorer as their only typical centre forward Simovic left in the winter. Also, the oldest striker in the squad right now is the 22-year-old Al Hamlawi. Considering all that one can expect Varberg to use a false nine often.