Sweden vs. Moldova: the preview

March 26th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments(2)

The question right now is where does Sweden really stand in Europe? We had some pretty moments in the last Euro qualifying campaign, only to end up not making it out of the group stages. Following that debacle we held onto Lars Lagerbäck for one last run at glory. The biggest mistake though of the 2010 World Cup Qualifiers was not keeping Lagerbäck, but hoping that Henrik Larsson would still be as sharp as in his past glory days. Larsson has finally retired now and is coaching in the Swedish second division. That means that our only big player of international caliber is Ibrahimovic. To me that means the only way Sweden is going to get any kind of results in the next couple of years is through a strong team model. If we choose to rely on individuals, we won’t be present at the next couple of tournaments except as spectators.

As of this writing Mikael Lustig is a question mark for the game due to a swollen knee. If he cannot play on Tuesday than we will have a completely new back four. Remember this is Moldova we are talking about. They are ranked 81st in the world. That means the chances of Sweden, currently 30th, losing to them seem like a bad joke. On the other hand, stranger things have happened in football and going into this with that much inexperience in the back is not going to make it easier.

The important thing for this game then is to first make sure that our defensive line figures each other out. There is no real learning curve here: we need a functioning back line to make sure things up front can go as planned and that the holding midfielders don’t feel they have to constantly be looking over their shoulders. We will be playing our standard 4-2-3-1. That is really just a fancy way of saying that we are going to try to do the pressing and won’t be relying on them to bring much of anything except for the counter strike.

This is what I am hoping and guessing that our starting eleven looks like:

Isaksson,

Lustig, Granqvist, J. Olsson, Wendt,

Wernbloom, Källström,

Larsson, Elmander, Bajrami,

Ibrahimovic

There has been a lot of media and fan chatter about letting Johan Wiland, our backup keeper, play this game and nab Isaksson’s spot. I don’t think this really changes all that much. Take a guy like Manuel Neuer, Germany’s number one keeper, he is the complete package but for Schalke with the team they currently have he can’t do it all. The keeper doesn’t make that much difference for a game like this, besides Isaksson and Wiland are both at about the same level ability-wise when it comes to stopping balls. There has also been some strange chatter about Wilhelmsson playing instead of Bajrami. Because of this, I have been paying special attention to Wilhelmsson´s last couple of appearances and am pretty far from impressed. He seems to have lost his pace and once something like that is gone; it’s gone for good. It is Bajrami’s time now.

Ibrahimovic has been on a dry run at AC Milan recently that culminated in his stupid red card and three-match ban. Hamren is without a doubt hoping that his resting against Palermo means he is ready to put some goals away. I however am of a different position. Ibrahimovic is the best player we have, but having him on the field means that others have a better chance of scoring because the Moldovan strategy will be to keep him from scoring some playstation-esque goals. That means that just like against Hungary, guys like Wernbloom, Bajrami, and Elmander will have some ridiculous chances. They should put at least two away. I am happy that Martin Olsson has made it back to the squad and would love to see him get some playing time.

The final score will be 2-1 for Sweden. Bajrami and Larsson to score in the first half and then Moldova gets one back in the last ten minutes when we get sloppy. Anything but a victory should be considered a disaster. I’ll post one more time before game time to give a squad injury update and note any changes in the starting eleven.