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A few minutes from the end of the chaotic European Championship match between Sweden and Poland, Janne Andersson decided to have fun in the technical area.
The usually straight Swedish coach saw a member of Poland’s backroom team Jakub Kwiatkowski scramble to retrieve the ball that had been kicked out of play and reach it first.
As Kwiatkowski faced him, Andersson played the ball between his counterpart’s legs and smiled at him.
I dug it in a tunnel, Andersson said, using a classic Swedish term for the football movement.
He got angry, but I was happy with the tunnel.
I didn’t do it to make fun of him. He just arrived and I put him between his legs.
As for flamboyance on the pitch, well, it was rare with Sweden at Euro 2020.
And that suits Andersson perfectly.
Sweden, one of the continent’s most pragmatic teams according to some, are once again in the knockout phase of a major tournament. And like at the 2018 World Cup, the team did it by being at the top of their group.
A 0-0 draw against a Spanish side who had 85% possession of the ball was followed by a sleepy 1-0 victory over Slovakia. OK, the 3-2 win over Poland on Wednesday was actually a lot of fun, but that was because the Poles were forced to launch an all-out attack looking for a win to qualify.
Sweden were ruthless in eliminating them, scoring three times on their four shots on target, but the team didn’t look so comfortable in such a game from start to finish.
Still, Andersson’s side are now unbeaten in eight games in 2021, winning seven and keeping six clean sheets along the way.
Dull? Sometimes.
Effective? Totally.
People continue to underestimate us, said Swedish midfielder Viktor Claesson, who scored the stoppage-time winner against Poland.
We won our group at the World Cup and now at the European Championship.
No one believed we could.
Perhaps it is time to take Sweden seriously, and Ukraine, their opponents in the round of 16 in Glasgow on Tuesday, can only expect a tough game.
I think the teams think it is difficult to play against us, said Andersson.
And it should be difficult to play against us.
It’s Andersson’s style. Difficult, robust, well drilled. After all, he is a follower of the 4-4-2 system introduced and rooted in Swedish football by English coaches Bob Houghton and Roy Hodgson in the 1970s and 1980s.
Two groups of four hard workers, plus a few usually burly attackers who run the canals, harass the defenders, and relish the air battle.
The current Swedish side of Andersson, who are starved of Zlatan Ibrahimovic at Euro 2020 after his international return was suspended due to injury, have some creative and exciting attacking jokers at forward Alexander Isak and winger Dejan Kulusevski.
But the foundations of a typical Swedish national team are all there, especially in right midfielder Sebastian Larsson, still as reliable as 36, and the central midfielder duo of Kristoffer Olssson and Albin Ekdal, for whom the solid term could have been invented.
Andersson knows there are several better quality opponents in this tournament, but few, if any, have the teamwork, discipline and organization of Sweden.
No matter what I do, someone will always have an opinion on me, he said.
I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to care about other people’s opinions. We need to focus on what we are doing and what we want to do.
Sweden will start as marginal favorites against Ukraine and a win would see the team equal their feat of 2018, when they reached the quarter-finals before falling to England. And, as fate willed it, England could still be a quarter-final opponent if they beat Germany in the round of 16.
For now, it’s all about rest and recovery from the win against Poland in uncomfortably hot conditions in St. Petersburg.
There will be no midsummer celebrations with their families for Swedish players this year, the country’s national day is June 26, three days before the game against Ukraine, but it is a sacrifice that they are happy to do.
For me, celebrating midsummer is eating herring and potato salads, Andersson said. (This year) we’ll have a little beer on the way home.
(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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