Sweden-Ukraine Pre-Preview

August 1st, 2011 | by: aron |

The first international of the 2011 fall is nearly upon us and I wanted to have a quick look at whom we are bringing, the opposition, and what the meaning of this game is anyway. For starters we are playing Ukraine for the second time this year. Don’t get me wrong I am not a big fan of playing the same teams over and over in a year or two, but since Ukraine is a team of just about the same quality as ourselves, it will be a good test of our preparedness for the important games coming up in September. I don’t know if we will see Ibrahimovic from start in this one as he has a packed schedule, but as recent results have shown we can win without him as well.

In September we have to take a little road trip to Budapest and then afterwards to San Marino. We need all six points if we are going to have a realistic chance of getting the best second place in the Euro qualifying groups. Even with the six points we probably still need a little luck in some of the other games around Europe. It is better though if we get our job done and don’t have to worry about what everyone else is up to. For those reasons Ukraine is good as a warm-up and as a chance to maybe test some new players (depending on the match picture).

The squad is most likely going to look something like this:

Andreas Isaksson
Johan Wiland
Oscar Wendt
Behrang Safari
Olof Mellberg
Daniel Majstorovic
Andreas Granqvist
Jonas Olsson
Mikael Lustig
Mikael Antonsson
Anders Svensson
Kim Källström
Pontus Wernbloom
Emir Bajrami
Rasmus Elm (big question mark on him at the moment)
Tobias Hysen
Sebastian Larsson
Christian Wilhelmsson
Martin Olsson
Johan Elmander
Zlatan Ibrahimovic (might get a chance to rest)
Ola Toivonen (expecting big things from him this year)
Alexander Gerndt

Now there are a couple of other names I would like to see as well in this squad. I would like to give Albin Ekdal a chance finally as he seems to be healthy at the moment and I don’t think it would hurt to give Ivo Pekalski a spot. Pekalski seems like a man for the future, but he has been cursed with injuries for the last half of the season and that’s why if he doesn’t get the call up I will not be surprised.

As for the game itself, I am expecting Hamren to let the boys work off the summer break cobwebs and get a feel for playing with each other again. The nice thing about our coach is that he isn’t the kind of guy who is ok with losing friendlies so I expect us to go for the win. A couple of goals wouldn’t hurt, but on the other hand this isn’t a massive win or disappear situation. The last time we played Ukraine was in the Cyprus cup earlier this year and we lost on penalties, though for official FIFA records it ended a draw. We are ranked at 19^th in the world for the moment and as we would like to stay at such a level due to tournament seeding, we would do well to keep winning.

What is more important in the long run is that all the players who switched clubs over the summer can settle into their new routines quickly and get a solid start in their respective leagues. If we get a bunch of satisfied players together for the qualifiers, then we have a big thing going.