Boreham Wood Rejects Djurgardens' £1.5m Bid for Abdulmalik
Boreham Wood are digging their heels in. Hard.
The National League club have rejected a second bid from Djurgardens for star winger Abdulmalik, this time worth £1.5m, according to Sky Sports News. The Swedish side had already seen an opening offer of £1m knocked back earlier this month.
For a fifth-tier club, those are eye-watering numbers. Boreham Wood are saying no anyway.
The message from the boardroom is clear: they want to keep their 23-year-old talisman, even as interest builds and the transfer window clock ticks louder with every day.
Djurgardens’ talent hunt
Djurgardens’ chase for Abdulmalik is no scattergun punt. It fits a well-defined plan.
BBC Sport report that the Allsvenskan club are working to a recruitment model based on signing emerging talent before prices explode, then selling on for a hefty profit. It is a system being driven by sporting director Maximilian Hahn, previously head of recruitment at West Ham United.
Hahn knows the British market and is leaning on those connections. He has worked alongside Sweden manager Graham Potter in east London and is now using that network to identify and move early on players who might otherwise slip through the cracks of the Premier League and Championship.
Abdulmalik is exactly that profile: young, hungry, undervalued by the system once, now exploding in a new environment.
From Millwall release to National League star
His rise has been rapid.
Abdulmalik arrived at Boreham Wood on a free transfer in 2024 after his release from Millwall, where he had picked up youth honours and represented England at Under-17 level. What looked like a setback has turned into a launchpad.
The 2025-26 season changed everything. He delivered 17 goals and 10 assists, numbers that don’t go unnoticed at any level, and was named National League Young Player of the Season.
Then came Wembley.
A standout performance in the play-off final under the arch pushed his profile even higher and sharpened Djurgardens’ interest. They have seen this movie before: they helped develop Danish striker August Priske, then moved him on to Birmingham City in January 2026. Abdulmalik is the next project they want to land.
Boreham Wood’s balancing act
For Boreham Wood, the stakes are huge on and off the pitch.
Turn down seven figures and you keep your best player, the man central to any serious push for automatic promotion into the English Football League. Accept it and you bank a transformative fee for a club at this level, but rip out the heart of your attack days or weeks before the deadline.
The board have, for now, chosen ambition over cash.
That leaves the coaching staff with a different challenge: managing the player. They have to keep Abdulmalik focused, level-headed, and unaffected by the lure of a big-money move abroad and the kind of platform that can change a career overnight.
His goals, his assists, his ability to decide games in tight moments – they are at the core of Boreham Wood’s promotion dream.
The bids are getting bigger. The window is getting shorter. How long can they keep saying no?
