Time to wave off a Swedish WC team, for the first time in eight years.
A hysterical breakdown on Monday.
The location?
It’s calm, apparently.
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Maybe you remember it, even if it was a while ago? The last time Sweden won a championship match was in European Championship 2021, against Poland. Lewandowski sent in two quick goals, burnt cat oozed around Robin Olsen, the game weighed at 2-2 and the clock went up a bit past 80 minutes.
And my good friend Hans Roland Backe sat on Swedish television with a resting pulse.
– It’s luuuugnt, he said.
People went crazy on the TV sofas, but Hasse was right. And five years later, a new Swedish team is on its way to the WC while the lower deck shakes. Dejan Kulusevski is missing, Alexander Isak hasn’t played 90 minutes once this season, and Viktor Gyökeres – the man who carried Sweden to the World Cup on his Terminator shoulders – has just landed in Sweden after losing a final.
In the 2000s, the national team played seventeen friendlies on their way to the championship – they had only lost two of them before this bunch went to Oslo and went down man and all.
The location? Luuuugnt?
The players who came out after 1–3 at Ullevål did their best to evoke their inner Hasse Backe. Training is training, b-eleven is b-eleven, WC is WC, and so on.
At the press conference yesterday, team captain Lindelöf repeated the same talking points, with the same calmness.
– We want to go into the championship with a good feeling, he said. You can get it in different ways, it’s not just about results.
And:
– I think you will see a different Sweden now.
I think so too. I hope so. Or, more honestly:
I think the hell out of me that we have the right to demand it.
Eleven meant to carry dreams
A good feeling? “Feeling refers to an act of the soul, the specific nature of which seems obvious to us through introspection, but nevertheless presents difficulties in analyzing and defining” as the genius Willy Kyrklund taught us in the intellectual novel “The right feeling”.
The dressing up in Oslo changed the input value of my big fat Greek genrep. If the same flaws are seen again, there is no other feeling than concern to take with them across the Atlantic.
On the way to the meeting with national team captain Graham Potter, I fired up a bit. He had said that Viktor Gyökeres wouldn’t play against Greece either, and that suddenly seemed damn strange.
This match has been loaded with meaning. Would Sweden’s most important player, a physical and mental phenomenon, be over, citing that he had a beer on a bus last Sunday?
I wanted to know. Why in the world was Potter so determined to spare Gyökeres? Why couldn’t he play against Greece?
– He plays from the start, said Potter.
Irritation: out. Curiosity: in.
Against an experimental Greece (silver fox Ivan Jovanovic is rumored to be testing 3-4-3), Sweden will line up with an eleven that is supposed to carry dreams.
That Alexander Isak reminded us that he is Alexander Isak was the only heavy joy on Monday. Tonight he will play next to Viktor Gyökeres, and if those two are in working, synchronized form, it is an attacking pair that scares everything and everyone.
It will fundamentally change the balance. Against Norway, Sweden didn’t even manage/want to activate Elanga’s speed or Gustaf Nilsson’s weight, here Sweden will automatically be moved fifteen meters higher.
Lindelöf is right
They survived the play-offs thanks to five-back line and prayers, but I’m still not entirely convinced that’s the way to go. Perhaps a four-back line is a more reasonable option, that’s what Potter started with when he took over an injury-riddled team last fall. We’ll see tonight, one more chance for the 5-3-2 model.
Individually, there is a costume rehearsal for Kristoffer Nordfeldt, Gabriel Gudmundsson, Benjamin Nygren and Alexander Bernhardsson. The places are theirs to make their own.
Victor Nilsson Lindelöf is right. It’s not about results, but that we/they/Potter need to see that there is another Sweden, a team that enters the WC with a clear identity and acceptable quality.
It is not possible to play the World Cup with a midfield that lacks both balance and aura. You can’t face Japan or the Netherlands with a back line that doesn’t fit together. I don’t judge, say, Eric Smith after a debut in a weak team in the wrong position, but already in Oslo the difference was noticeable when father Lindelöf entered. Different security, different quality in the plays, tonight we can hope that it leads to another (better) Isak Hien next to him.
Sweden have themselves to blame, they have loaded this evening with more importance than it should have.
If they are a balanced team with two world-class strikers, they can go to the WC and believe in something.
If they are something else, something that looks like the last one?
Then I don’t know. But it won’t be easy.
Sweden’s matches before the championships in the 2000s:
2000, EC:
1–1 against Spain in Gothenburg.
2002, WC:
1–2 against Paraguay in Solna.
1-1 against Japan in Tokyo.
2004, EC:
3–1 against Finland in Tampere.
3–1 against Poland in Solna.
2006, WC:
0–0 against Finland in Gothenburg.
1–1 against Chile in Solna.
2008, EC:
1–0 against Slovenia in Gothenburg.
0–1 against Ukraine in Solna.
2012, EC:
3–2 against Iceland in Gothenburg.
2–1 against Serbia in Solna.
2016, EC:
0–0 against Slovenia in Malmö.
3–0 against Wales in Solna.
2018, WC:
0–0 against Denmark in Solna.
0–0 against Peru in Gothenburg.
2021, EC:
2–0 against Finland in Solna.
3–1 against Armenia in Solna.
2026, WC:
1–3 against Norway in Oslo.
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