Squad List: Elm is back

March 16th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments(2)

On Tuesday, in a press conference in Stockholm, Swedish national coach Erik Hamren released the squad for the Euro qualifier against Moldova. Of all the squads he’s had to pick so far this was probably the most difficult. There are several reasons for this.

The first reason is Olof Mellberg’s red card against San Marino when we were already up 2-0 or something unreachable like that. It was a foul committed inside the San Marino half of the field, meaning Mellberg was on the offensive side of things. Who gets themselves a red card against a garbage team like that when your team is already cruising (in the lightest sense of the word-it might as well have been walking) to an easy victory? Hamren had to pick a replacement and he picked Andreas Granqvist (FC Groningen). That was against the Netherlands, it was a disaster, and now we expect him to have the game of his life to prove he can hang around at this level.

Then Daniel Majstorovic broke his toe. That is fair enough and there isn’t so much to be done about this loss, but it does mean we are going to have a brand new center back pairing for this game-a pair that hasn’t played together in a competitive match before. The other half of that pair is Jonas Olsson (Westbromwich Albion). I like Olsson, but watching him and Granqvist figure each other out in a game like this isn’t my idea of fun. I doubt Hamren thinks its fun either. This also meant that Antonsson and Almebäck (the next Mellberg?) had to be called up for this game.

Finally, adding to our defensive woes, there is the loss of Behrang Safari. If he hadn’t been injured though I get the feeling he would have seen the game from the bench anyway. He hasn’t been convincing recently for the national team with two grave errors in the last two games he’s played for Sweden.

After we get past the defensive mire that will be our back four, we get to our Co-Captain and genius midfielder Anders Svensson who is also injured. This one is simple and Pontus Wernbloom will start in his place along with Kim Källström in the defensive side of the midfield.

The only thing that is really worrying me is the striker question. Where are we gonna get those goals from? Ibrahimovic is having a miserable dry run with AC Milan, Elmander is playing as right-winger at Bolton, and Berg can’t hit anything at all. Gerndt got the call up, but I wonder how big of a chance he has at even reaching the bench. Final question is whether or not Rasmus Elm is ready for the big time or not?

We’ll either win this game with what we have or we won’t be going to the party come 2012.

The full squad:

Andreas Isaksson, Johan Wiland, Michael Almebäck, Mikael Antonsson, Andreas Granqvist, Mikael Lustig, Jonas Olsson, Oscar Wendt, Emir Bajrami, Marcus Berg, Rasmus Elm, Johan Elmander, Alexander Gerndt, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Kim Källström, Sebastian Larsson, Martin Olsson, Marcus Rosenberg, Pontus Wernbloom, Christian Wilhelmsson,