Beautiful Football, Righteous Chocolate Attracts Tosa Native to Sweden

Wauwatosa West graduate Andy Stadler is preparing to begin his fourth season of professional soccer thousands of miles away from his hometown.

The 25-year-old is an attacking midfielder for Sandvikens IF, a third-division team in Sandviken, a small town in south-central Sweden. He arrived there after starring for the Trojans and then for George Washington University.

Stadler led George Washington in scoring as a sophomore, junior and senior, and was first-team All-Mid-Atlantic Region as a junior and senior. He had dreams of getting a shot at Major League Soccer but said a couple of hamstring injuries made that difficult.

He returned to George Washington to wrap up his degree and said he wasn’t sure if he’d ever play again.

“I talked to a friend from Milwaukee and through his contact he got me set up out here in Sweden and I have been out here since so this is the first club I have signed and played for since I left (college),” he wrote via email.

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The club was in the fourth division when he joined, but was promoted thanks to a high league finish and has remained in the third division since. Stadler said the regular season runs from April through October, and he has been training since January.

“So January-November is when I am here in Sweden, the rest I visit to D.C. to see old friends and back home in Wauwatosa to see the family and other friends,” he wrote.

Last year he scored five goals, tied for second on the team, as Sandviken finished ninth in the 14-team table. The 2013 season in the begins April 13.

Life in Sweden has its ups and downs. He said the best thing about being there is the football, which is his main purpose, but “the chocolate is righteous and the women are quite beautiful as well,” he wrote.

The toughest adjustments were the language — “it’s like nothing I have ever heard before” — and the weather.

“It is pretty much winter months and snow from early November until early April and I am not a fan of the cold,” he wrote.