It is cold and gloomy when I ask one of the Syriac Orthodox youths in the Swedish city of Södertälje to describe to me what the past year has been like. “Dark, very dark,” he replies. But he is not referring to the severe persecution of his people – a Christian ethnic group indigenous to large swathes of Iraq, Syria and parts of Turkey. Instead, he is talking about soccer.
Södertälje, which has become a home to upwards of 30,000 Middle Eastern Christians over the past decades, has not one, but two Syriac soccer teams: Assyriska, the original club founded in 1974, and their rival, Syrianska, a breakaway group formed a few years later. In the city’s stadium, I am watching them play each other in the final game of the season. Syrianska are winning and will be promoted to second-tier Swedish soccer; Assyriska, on the other hand, haven’t had a win for over 20 games, have already been relegated and are now watching their rivals beat them in the cold and rain. Dark. Very dark indeed.
