Underdog Stories / Football history

History of FC Rosengård: How a Women's Powerhouse Was Built

The history of FC Rosengård women's football club runs from Malmö FF Dam in 1970 to a 2025 relegation scare. Here is how it got there, and why.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · August 3, 2026

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On 4 October 2024, Rosengård beat Kristianstad 2-1 at Malmö IP and secured the Swedish title in round 22, the club's 14th. A year later the coach who built that team had been sacked, and the club was 11th and looking nervously at the relegation playoff.

The history of FC Rosengård women's football club is the story of how that happened. The club began on 7 September 1970, when Malmö FF's board started a women's team called Malmö FF Dam. It left the parent club in 2007 as LdB FC Malmö, merged with a Rosengård community club in 2013, and became a record 14-time Swedish champion.

This is the story Chris Horwedel tells in the Why We Love This Club episode "FC Rosengård: The Women's Powerhouse Fighting to Survive Its Own Future". I've checked his script against the record and flagged where they differ.

History of FC Rosengård women's football club: how did it start?

Horwedel's line for the early years is that for most of the club's history the names on the badge kept changing while the football lineage stayed the same. That's accurate, and it makes the club hard to describe in one sentence.

The first national title came in 1986. It then took three seasons after the Damallsvenskan began in 1988 to win it, in 1990, with more titles in 1991, 1993 and 1994. The episode names Lena Videkull as the defining forward of that era. The club's own history has her back as coach by 2001, in her third year in the job.

Then came the long wait. The episode calls it "an almost industrial amount of frustration". It dates the run of second-place finishes to "1996 to 1992", which can't be right. The record says seven straight runner-up finishes, from 1996 to 2002.

One more correction. The episode says Malmö lost the 2004 UEFA Women's Cup semi-final to Umeå. Other sources have it as a 1-4 aggregate defeat to 1. FFC Frankfurt. It was still the club's deepest run in the competition when that source was written.

Why was the club called LdB FC Malmö?

Because of a skincare deal. The episode says the sponsor's name was "Lait Débuté", and it gets the company's name wrong too. The club was renamed on 11 April 2007 as part of a 24 million kronor sponsorship with the skincare firm Hardford, whose brand Lait de Beauté, literally "beauty milk" in French, became the club's name.

It looks like a joke, but the money bought something real. The club fully withdrew from Malmö FF and became a club of its own. Horwedel's point is that the women could now build partnerships around women's football instead of waiting for room inside a bigger organisation. I think that's the most important decision in the club's history. Every later problem comes from it.

It worked on the pitch. LdB won the title in 2010 and defended it in 2011. Then came a bad day. On the last day of 2012 they lost 0-1 at home to Tyresö, who took the title on goal difference. The episode's transcript garbles the name, but Tyresö is the rival with Marta in the squad. A 3-2 away win at Tyresö was the turning point of 2013, and Malmö won the title again.

How did Rosengård 1917 get involved?

In October 2013 LdB FC Malmö merged with FC Rosengård 1917 and took its name. The change was formalised on 12 December 2013. The community club was founded in 1917 as Malmö Boll & Idrottsförening, and Zlatan Ibrahimović started out there. A women's club that had briefly been named after beauty milk ended up sharing a name with Zlatan's first club.

The episode describes Rosengård as one of Malmö's most diverse neighbourhoods. It says the district is usually discussed through poverty and crime figures, and that the club tried to change that. The programmes are real and specific:

Boost by FC Rosengård has helped more than 7,000 people since 2003.
Every week the club reads to 350 children aged 5 to 10 before practice.
The Football for Life centre for girls in South Africa has run since 2008.

“Rosengård must compete against resources that it helped prove were worth investing in.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

The motto is "Believe in your dream". Horwedel admits it sounds like something printed above an office water fountain. At Rosengård, he says, it came from a practical idea that football can open up education, confidence, work and public space. I'd agree. Reading sessions before training are not a slogan.

Did Marta play for FC Rosengård?

She did. According to the episode, when Tyresö collapsed financially in 2014, Rosengård signed her. The club's own history lists her as the star recruit of summer 2014, alongside Amanda Ilestedt, Therese Sjögran, Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir, Ramona Bachmann and Anja Mittag, who was top scorer with 21 goals.

The title that year was won with two rounds left, twelve points clear of KIF Örebro. Titles in 2014 and 2015 added to 2013 and made three in a row, a first for the club. The episode adds more in 2019, 2021 and 2022, and says Bayern, Barcelona and Wolfsburg became regular visitors to Malmö. Rosengård never reached a European final.

The home ground helps the legend. Malmö IP is a stadium for about 7,600 people. The episode says it's close enough to hear everything said on the pitch, which is wonderful until the language gets creative.

What happened after the record 2024 season?

Horwedel opens with the 2024 numbers, and they're startling. A few details in the episode need fixing. It says the club won its first 25 matches and dropped points only in a final-day draw. They won 25 matches, 23 of them in a row, and lost one. That loss was a 2-3 home defeat to Hammarby on 20 October, the club's first league defeat in 369 days. The rest matches the episode: 99 goals scored and 9 conceded.

Captain Caroline Seger (the transcript spells her "Sager") lifted the trophy after the final match, then retired. Other leading players left too.

The 2025 collapse is in the episode and in other sources. Rosengård won five of 26 matches and finished 11th on 25 points, two points above the relegation playoff spot. It was the club's worst finish ever in the Damallsvenskan. Nine straight defeats and twelve matches without a win left them in the playoff places with three games to play. Joel Kjetselberg, the coach behind the 2024 title, was dismissed in September. The transcript spells his name "Schätzelberg". The club rehired him 128 days later. In Horwedel's words, football occasionally discovers that its previous solution is also its new solution.

The episode's 2026 snapshot has the club 13th of 14 with 10 points from 13 matches. That figure will be out of date by the time you read this. By August, Swedish coverage was asking what the new investment would mean if Rosengård went down.

That investment is a part of the story the episode doesn't tell. In January 2026, the multi-club ownership group Crux Football took a 49% stake, and the club's association kept more than 51% of the voting rights. Seger returned as Head of Football. I'd say independence is a looser word than it was in 2007.

Is there a Malmö FF women's team, and who is the real successor?

There is. Malmö FF's current women's team was formed on 26 November 2019. The episode says it climbed from the bottom of the pyramid by winning promotion repeatedly and reached the Damallsvenskan in 2025.

The city's first women's derby came at once. Before the cup meeting in March 2025, the clubs said they had never played each other on the women's side. It ended 1-1 at Eleda Stadion in front of 8,797 people. The first league derby followed in August. Anna Plantin scored the only goal for Malmö on her first touch, in front of 4,655 spectators. The episode says Malmö FF won both league meetings. The second, in October, finished 2-1.

Before that first league derby, Rosengård's Jo-Anne Cronquist said Malmö FF probably had more supporters because of the men's side. She also said her own team was "lite underdog", a bit of an underdog. That is the episode's argument in a single player's words.

Who is the original? Horwedel says Rosengård has the continuous sporting history, and Malmö FF has the famous name, the commercial scale and the link to the men's club. Wikipedia's page on the new team agrees on the lineage. It says the 1970 club is now known as FC Rosengård. Nobody is disputing the paperwork, only what it counts for.

The episode's real point is about money. Independent clubs like Rosengård led the sport's professionalisation because traditional men's clubs ignored it. Now those clubs arrive with stadiums, marketing departments and academies, and the pioneers have to compete with what they helped prove was worth building. The beauty milk lasted six years. The Rosengård name has already outlasted it twice over.