The ‘Battle of the Bridge’: The Quest for Superiority in Scandinavian Football

In December 2019, FC Copenhagen and Malmö FF met in the final round of the UEFA Europa League group stage. The match was in media labelled ‘the battle of the bridge’ since the two clubs from Denmark and Sweden were just a bridge apart. The two clubs both have the ambition to be a leading club in Scandinavia and the aim of this paper is to examine to what extent it is possible to determine which one of the two clubs can claim to be superior in Scandinavia. The evaluation is based on a comparison of the two clubs’ performance in three dimensions: success in sports, financial performance and contribution to society. Given the different organizational and contextual conditions, a relative comparative approach was used. Results show that none of the clubs is superior as a whole, but have respective strong competitive advantages in the individual dimensions.