Introductions

February 14th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments Off

It’s taken me a little while to come up with a good way to re-start this blog about the Swedish national team. I’ll start by introducing myself. I am half-Swedish, half-American and live in Germany at the moment. Its hard not to take an interest in football while living in Germany, be it at the international or league level, and so after spending way too much time reading all the football news I could get my hands on, I decided it would be a good idea to write something where I could give my thoughts about all the current events and happenings in the Swedish football scene.

My affair, as one could call it, with the Swedish national team began when I watched them, unfortunately on TV, take on Paraguay in the 2006 World Cup. I remember watching with desperation as the minutes ticked away and the reality started to set in that we might not be making an appearance in the knock out rounds. Then came that crazy run of play in the 89^th minute that culminated with Ljungberg heading in the ball for the 1-0. It was pure ecstasy and I was hooked. To add to this addiction, there was a Euro 2008 qualifier against Spain in Stockholm in the fall of 2006. I was sitting on my couch at home after not being able to get any tickets. I expected Spain to give us a beating for the ages. What happened? Sweden outplayed Spain the whole game and walked away with a 2-0 victory. It’s a long time ago now in the football world, but I hope that days like those where Sweden could handle top-ten teams are about to return. I hope that during my time here I can also share my appreciation and joy for Swedish football with you the readers.

I am going to be covering the national team’s ongoing, and most likely nail biting, qualifying adventure for Euro 2012. To go along with this I will be doing game analysis, tactics, and doing some player profiles. I am going to be keeping tabs on the development of the new U-21 squad as well. A lot of these youngster talents will feature in the national team in the coming years and so they shouldn’t be forgotten. The next qualifying campaign for the UEFA Under-21 Championship in Israel 2013 starts in the early fall. I will also be giving some analysis of the Swedish 1^st league, Allsvenskan, when the season starts in the spring. While not currently a league whose teams have any big presence in Europe, or any recent success in the Europa League or the Champions League for that matter, it is still a league that remains full of surprises and this coming season looks like it will be a toss up when it comes to predicting a winner.

The next post will be a review of the Cyprus vs. Sweden game from the 8^th of February on Wednesday of this week. Stay tuned…