‘We always know we will lose players’ – How Sweden’s Damallsvenskan copes with being the most popular market for transfers to the WSL and beyond

When a club understands that, it can plan ahead. That’s the case at Hacken, the team that currently sits top of the Damallsvenskan despite losing three key players in the January window, which comes in the league’s off-season, and two more in the summer window, which sits in the middle of the 2026 campaign.

“We always have to be, I would say, two windows in front,” Lundstrom, the club’s head of women’s football, tells GOAL. That means that, in recent weeks, the staff have been assessing which players they could sign in next summer’s transfer window, January 2028 or even two years from now.

“That’s how we work, creating shadow teams and how it can look in the future, because we always know that we will lose players,” he explains.

There are other factors to consider, too. Getting the right mix in the squad of experienced players, younger talent and prospects from the youth teams is important, as is having players who need to develop but who could do so to become in-house replacements for departures down the line. This helps to reduce the turnover in the squad, too.

Hammarby is another club that regularly loses its best players and still manages to stay near the top of the Damallsvenskan. Eva Nystrom, the Finland captain who spent four years there, believes a big reason why, among several, is because the club creates a great framework that means individual departures are less impactful.

“We always talked and did a lot with the team, so it didn’t really matter who was playing in different positions, because we had the principles and the DNA. Everyone knew what to do,” she explained.

In essence, regardless of how a team plans for departures, it is the planning in general that is vital. That’s what helps a club bounce back.