Lagerbäck Shocks Swedes With Squad Selection

May 9th, 2006 | by: Jon | Comments Off

Lars Lagerbäck almost did a Sven today by surprising the sports hacks with his and Roland Andersson’s squad selection for the World Cup.

Of course, there was no surprise Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Barcelona’s Henrik Larsson were named, but it did seem rather excessive to select six strikers.

The biggest shock was undoubtedly the omission of right-back Alexander Östlund. Then again, Östlund who plies his trade for Southampton in the UK, was largely blamed for Sweden’s 3-0 defeat at the hands of Ireland in March

Österlund has struggled with his weight, his pace, the ball, his shoelaces and his beard of late. Oh, and he’s also struggled playing professional football. Clearly Lagerbäck and Andersson are saying “Take some time to get your act together”. Well, that or “We decided to try and shore up the leaky defence.” Seriously, it must be a bit of a kick in the beard, erm, teeth to lose your place in the national side like that. Poor lamb.

Lagerbäck did find places for two players previously on the periphery of the national squad: IFK Gothenburg’s Karl Svensson and Fredrik Stenman who plays for German side Bayer Leverkusen. Perhaps Stenman is going along to provide inside information on the German team, should Sweden progress to the knock-out stages.

Or translator? Or perhaps he’ll run Theo Wallpaper or whatever his name is off the park.

All in all it looks like the kind of squad we’ve been used to in Sweden. A few experienced, world class players. A couple of young talents and aging journey men. And one or two players who are basically along to make up the numbers. If you want me to name names, you’ll have to make me a very good offer.