DALLAS. It didn’t really come together, it wasn’t really everything we hoped for.
But that is history now.
And we have wonderful, American days ahead of us.
When Graham Potter before the Japan match was to summarize the World Cup experience in Texas, he turned to an English expression:
– This is, literally, my first rodeo, he said. This is literaln my first rodeo.
He’s never been part of this before, and I don’t know if I’ve been part of a team selection like this before either, in a situation like this.
Change the goalkeeper, move the captain up to a different position, let a team that conceded five go from two strikers to three. Hurt the one player who has been told he must always play – in with a frothy twenty-year-old with a couple of caps under his belt. Cramp on the captain, in with the players at the very end of the squad line.
Cowboy hat on, polish the boots, kick the spurs. Yea! up on the horse.
And when it was all over, Anthony Elanga sat there on the grass, mad, pounding his hands on the ground.
He didn’t understand what 1-1 meant, that it was enough to move on. What a delightful little speed monster he is anyway.
The plan succeeded
It has been 36 years since Sweden last went out of a World Cup in the group phase, and those of us who were at Marassi then will never forget how empty it feels.
This team didn’t want to end up there, they wanted to navigate away from the excel sheets and computers and move forward on their own machine.
And it was indeed a special machine Graham Potter sketched out.
The new balance worked, of course, better than last time. Partly due to the fact that Japan did not have a first pass to threaten with (Ayase Ueda is, so to speak, no Brian Brobbey), but partly also because Sweden looked more synchronized in the defensive work.
Team father Victor Lindelöf mastered the midfield role as he did at Aston Villa. Safe in the positional game, quick to sink when Isak Hien bumped up in backs. Comfortable enough with the ball.
This was a match that made the very idea of the game even clearer, in all its relative dullness:
Lots of bodies in the defensive zone, the giant Jacob Widell Zetterström in the goal – and then shovel the ball up to disarm Japan’s pressing game, and hope that a wall breaker (Gyökeres), an artist (Isak) and a weasel (Elanga) will be enough of a threat.
Everything I write now, in the vibrating Texas evening, must of course be read against the background that the plan succeeded. Sweden survived, they did it fairly, they are in the round of 16. The World Cup is already approved, Graham Potter’s journey as national team captain a success in terms of results.
Bless him
Having said that, this is a team with holes in it. They tried against Japan, no one hid, but the line-up with Yasin Ayari and Victor Lindelöf alone against four Japanese midfielders meant that Sweden almost never managed to activate their super attack with anything other than aerial pies intended for Viktor Gyökeres. When Lucas Bergvall took over after Hien’s injury, Sweden got what you get with Lucas: Good things, bad things, but constantly a lot of things. Energy, physicality, a desire to make a non-stop impression.
Sweden did not have a composed counterattack in the entire match. Alexander Isak was peripheral in the game, because nobody found his feet, and because he couldn’t get involved himself.
You can say a lot about Viktor Gyökeres, but mostly and first that he does his job… every f**ing time. He tears, he tears, he fights and bites. When the equalizing goal came, against a Japan that had become passive after the eternal machine Maeda 1-0, Gyökeres was behind it.
He met, he got the ball to Anthony Elanga, he took on a Japanese defender with a deep run, and he opened the door for Elanga.
And Elanga?
– Bless him. I love him… today, as Potter said when I informed him that his striker had accidentally missed that a draw was enough and sufficient.
Sweden’s second half was better than the first, but it also leaves the national team captain with conundrums that are difficult to solve.
Isak Hien broke, horribly, but Sweden solved it well afterwards. The questions are more about how he will use Alexander Isak in the game without the ball, and that he may have to make a very tough choice:
Sweden needs one more midfielder, at least. But it’s not possible to poke the x-factor Anthony Elanga in a playoff match where Sweden must be able to counter?
Against France? Germany? Norway?
We’ll see, the future will tell. But do you know what the beauty of the future is?
We are in it. We still have a blue-yellow WC summer to dance on in.
Bless them. Today.
The national team
