Östers IF

The ground in Växjö holds a little over 12,000, and Öster moved into it in 2012 after nearly half a century at Värendsvallen, a larger and older bowl the club had used since 1966. The new arena has changed sponsor names more than once — Myresjöhus, then Visma, now Spiris — while the tenants have stayed the same: red shirts, blue shorts, and a support that has watched the side go up and down the Swedish divisions ever since.

The club began in April 1930 as Östers Fotbollförening, a football club and nothing else, and took the broader name Östers Idrottsförening two years later. Its best years came much later. Between 1968 and 1981 Öster won Allsvenskan four times, three of those titles inside four seasons at the turn of the 1980s, and took the Svenska Cupen in 1976–77. Kalmar FF remained the fixture that mattered most; the Smålandsderbyt still frames the calendar.

What followed was steeper than the climb. Relegation in 1988 began a long slide that twice dropped the club to the third tier, in 2007 and again in 2014. Öster won Superettan in 2002 and 2012 and Division 1 Södra three times, each promotion a step back towards a level it could not hold. The 2025 return to Allsvenskan lasted a single season.

Thomas Ravelli kept goal here before the fall. He came out of the Öster side of the title years, the one that also carried Roland Sandberg and Conny Torstensson.