Sweden 3 Holland 2: or we made it!

October 12th, 2011 | by: aron | No Comments »

What a game! What a colossal group effort! We won and in dramatic fashion against the second ranked team in the world! Where do I start this post?

This is one of those few times in life where it feels so good to be wrong. I tipped 2-1 to the Netherlands before the game started and to be honest after such weak showings against Hungary, San Marino, and Finland I think I was justified in doing so. The thing is that we don´t often lose at home or at least not at home in Råsunda. The last time was against Denmark in the 2010 World Cup Qualifiers because one of our defenders thought it would be a great idea to back heel the ball to a Danish player. So given our track record at home, there was every reason to believe that it would be a close game and thus the tip for 2-1.

Things started good for Sweden. We got rid of Christian Wilhelmsson, who has probably seen his last international, and instead moved Larsson to the left and Elm up to the right wing. That meant that we didn´t have very much speed on the wings, but we had two wise young owls holding down the fort. Toivonen got the nod for the number 10 and Elmander as the classic 9. In hindsight this was a fantastic piece of work by Hamren that still had all the journalists up in arms before the game. The most common complaint was that he switched things up to much and didn´t give anyone the space to learn. Funny that it was exactly changes that were most desired and even begged for when Lars Lagerbäck was at the helm!