Hoping for Toivonen

April 8th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments(2)

As a Swede watching Swedish players and the Swedish national team, it’s hard to view the whole game of football without taking sides. This can be about the value and treatment of certain players at certain clubs and it can also be about the way the national team plays and should play. To some degree its my job on this blog to give my opinion, yet before I do so I should always try stop first and give my thoughts some time to really develop and go below the surface-level emotions.

Ola Toivonen plays for PSV Eindhoven in the Eredivisie. He’s been there for about two seasons now. Under Hamren´s leadership, he has also become a starter for the national team, which may or may not have been a surprise to many fans. I for one wasn’t really sure if he was going to bring much of anything. I had watched him closely at the 2009 U21 championships and though I admit he was good, I didn’t think he was quite ready for the big time just yet. I still thought that he needed some time to prove himself.  Toivonen is mainly a striker, but he can also play as some kind of mix between that and a playmaker/offensive midfielder. Sure, he is miles from being someone like Xavi or even Özil and truth be told I don’t think he will ever be remembered as a legend for any club that he plays at. The question is more what steps will he take next in his own development and will it be the right ones? Toivonen is also having some disciplinary issues, at the moment, with Eredivisie referees who seem to think that he likes using his elbows a bit much. However if he gets back in proper goal scoring and assisting mode he is irreplaceable for Sweden at the moment.

When I compare Toivonen with Johan Elmander (who no matter what game it is, always runs his heart out on the pitch), I see that the potential is there for helping our central striker. When you play with a 4-2-3-1 system, there is only room for one true striker, and everyone else on the pitch will also have different tasks that they are expected to carry out. If you play on the wings, then you have to track back and defend. If you play behind the center striker, then you have to have the understanding to know where to go when someone like Ibrahimovic is off doing his thing. Toivonen seems to have this situational awareness and that is why I think he should be our starter against Moldova in the next qualifier on the third of June.

In the home leg of the Moldova games, we played really well the first fifteen minutes and then we fell into some kind of a lull where it seemed that we realized we were the better team and therefore didn’t have to keep asserting ourselves. Essentially we fell back into some slow rhythm and gave up pressing. It doesn’t matter what team you are meeting, if it is a home game then you are expected to control the game to some extent. Allowing the away team to do so just gives them a chance to catch their breaths and even see some light. In any case Ibrahimovic and Elmander didn’t find each other very well and in the second half we couldn’t hold onto the ball at all. Elmander, like I have said before, gives everything he has, but he is a technically limited player and he can’t hold the ball and he cannot under any circumstances seem to deliver that last pass. Toivonen on the other hand can and that is why I want to see him in the starting eleven come June.