Having never won major silverware before, the club from a tiny village on the Swedish coast have lost just one Allsvenskan match all season, and are 11 points clear at the top of the table with four matches to play.
A 2-0 win at home to Elfsborg last Saturday meant second-placed Hammarby had to win away at IFK Goteborg to make Mjallby wait for their crowning moment. A 2-1 win for the Stockholm side means the celebrations are on hold for now.
Speaking to Flashscore ahead of the Elfsborg match, Andersson is asked for one word to sum up the whole season for Mjallby.
"Well, I would say ‘unbelievable’, because this is such a small club compared to the others in Sweden, and also the history – they have never been in this situation at all."
'All the ingredients'
Seeing Mjallby, a team who had never finished higher than fifth in the top flight, so far ahead with the title within sight, is something of a footballing miracle. But for Andersson, there are clear reasons for their success.
"For me, this team today is a complete team. They have their physical strength, they have their set pieces – they’re strong at set pieces – they play really good football when they have the ball, they run a lot and they work really hard without the ball.
"So they have all the ingredients to be a good team."
Read Flashscore's report of Mjallby 2-0 Elfsborg
Many of those ingredients have been put together by head coach Anders Torstensson and his assistant, Karl Marius Aksum, whose PhD in Visual Perception in Elite Football has helped transform MAIF from a team who typically sat deep, into one that plays on the front foot.
Andersson recalls that Swedish football has a history of young coaches coming in and implementing new methods to great success.
"I think we’ve seen it before here in Sweden with an English coach, Graham Potter, who took Ostersund – which is up north and it’s winter soon! And he took players who played in the second division – all of them – to start playing like Barcelona.
"That was the first time I saw someone implement these kinds of tactics in players who are not up on the same level as the others. But they outplayed them!
"And this is what Mjallby has done as well this year. Because here were hard-working team players and now they also dominate games, that’s why they win the league."
Swedish football 'more equal'
Mjallby's dominance after years of relative obscurity has inevitably drawn comparisons to Leicester City, who won the Premier League in 2015/16, yet club ownership models in Sweden and England are vastly different. Does Andersson feel the Allsvenskan system has helped Mjallby?
"Yes, definitely! I feel that we have a great system in many senses, because the members own the clubs, we have a 51% rule here so the members have to own 51%. So you can not have an investor coming in putting in all the money. That’s why it’s more equal here."
Yet nothing is ever perfect, as Andersson points out when comparing his nation to its near-neighbours.
"But that’s why we’re also a little behind Denmark and Norway at the moment, and that’s a little bit more hard to take! But anyway, that helps the smaller clubs, of course. Because Leicester, however amazing that was, they have a budget that is far beyond all the teams in Sweden!"
All the other teams, however, are not quite like Mjallby, who play in the village of Hallevik, right on the coast and a short drive from the slightly larger town that bears the club's name.
"This is amazing here, there’s 800 people living in this village and all of them are working with Mjallby, I feel! So it’s really a family affair, in the sense that the family is the village. It’s amazing!" Andersson lauds.
Mjallby are 'mean'
The fishing villages and farming community nearby are a far cry from where Andersson spent his career, at clubs who expected success, such as Malmo and Benfica, where he won the Taca de Portugal amid a three-year spell.
A member of the Sweden team that went to the 1992 Olympic Games, his 11-year career with the senior national team saw him appear at both UEFA Euro 2000 and UEFA Euro 2004, before he retired from playing in 2008.
How does the now 51-year-old empathise with players at smaller clubs who perhaps did not expect to be in the position they are in?
"I think that is one of the amazing things with the team as well, that they have grown a really strong mentality. And what I’m impressed by – and what big teams need – is mean players. Mean players on the pitch, they don’t take any crap from anyone.
This is a true story I heard; before the away game in Malmo, they went to the referee and said, ‘have a look at Malmo, if they’re starting to slow the game, because we want pace, we want to run this game.’ Before the game! With the biggest opponent! They have this confidence.
They are talking on the pitch. In Britain you’re used to it, people trash talking, and they can do that as well. So they have everything, I’m so impressed with them, I think they have done amazingly."
Read Flashscore's exclusive interview with Mjallby striker Jacob Bergstrom
Despite their toughness, the family spirit at MAIF is not lost on the players, too, as Andersson explains.
"Most of all they are a group that like each other, they are like a family. I think four or five players live in the same building. They have families and they meet for barbecues down in the yard. Because there’s not much to do here!" he laughs.
Roy Hodgson was 'fantastic'
A Danish Superliga winner with AaB, Andersson headed to Denmark after spending a year at Blackburn Rovers, for whom he played eight times, scoring once. He fondly remembers his time at Ewood Park, despite it not lasting long, but is he still following the Lancashire side?
"I am! Unfortunately they are not doing as well, right now," he admits, with Rovers hovering above the Championship relegation zone.
"I was there 97/98, with Roy Hodgson as the coach and we ended up, I think, sixth in the league, so that was quite good as well – overachieving.
"A fantastic coach, Roy Hodgson! We had an amazing team with Damien Duff, Tim Sherwood, Chris Sutton, Martin Dahlin, Colin Hendry, Tim Flowers! I really enjoyed my time there, but I didn’t play that much so I had to go elsewhere," he concludes.