The Cyprus Cup Part 1: Cyprus vs Sweden

February 16th, 2011 | by: aron | Comments Off

Sweden took part in the 2011 Cyprus Cup. Never heard of it before? Not many had. In any case the somewhat odd and demanding tournament format meant that national coach Erik Hamren had to take out a squad with 33 players (should have been 34 but Albin Ekdal from Bologna had to withdraw because of injury). The set up was that one game was played on the 8th (against Cyprus) and then the second game was played on the 9th (Ukraine). This meant that players could only feature in one of the two games.

The starting line-up for the Cyprus game was as follows:

Wiland, Wendt, Almebäck, J. Olsson, A. Johansson, R. Elm, Wernbloom, Hysen, Toivonen,           M. Olsson, Berg

To be fair, this was the B-squad as far as available players go. Sure Wernbloom has featured in all three Euro qualifiers in 2010, but it appears that he is still a question mark as far as the A-team goes. The debacle against Holland didn’t help him. Toivonen has picked up too many yellow cards and is not allowed to play in the qualifier against Moldova on March 29th, which explains why he was not picked for the Ukraine game. Rasmus Elm was once a regular starter in the national team (at least for the 2010 World Cup qualifiers), but due to a series of injury problems has had issues regaining full fitness for the international level.

To the game then, Sweden looked a bit shaky in the first fifteen minutes or so but after that took over more and more. Hysen and Berg scored and the final result was sealed 2-0. A win is a win and it should always be taken in any shape or form. The thing with a game like this is that it isn’t really about the result. Hamren was giving these players a chance to show whether or not they want to play a part in the coming qualifiers. So who took the chance? To be fair no one really destroyed their chances, but no one really showed that they are quite ready either. Martin Olsson looked sharp and it isn’t a great leap of faith to assume that if he keeps getting playing time at Blackburn, he will be selected for the squad against Moldova. Rasmus Elm was the player that I had my eye on. Was he back at his old level of play? Could he put in a convincing appearance? The answer is that he did ok, but I doubt ok is going to be good enough to earn a place for the next game. Elm has a bright future ahead of him and hopefully also some memorable moments with the national team still to come, but it isn’t going to be this spring.

Another thing to note with this game and tournament as a whole is that players who were hoping to get a chance on the national team, and weren’t picked for these games, can assume that they are a long way from any competitive game squad selection and that only stellar performances or a crazy run of injuries to the starting line-up will lead to them getting a phone call or sms from players manager Marcus Allbäck.

Random: the English commentators on Eurosport 2 (where I got the stream from) kept talking about Hussein this and Hussein that, and I kept wondering who this new guy was. Finally, I realized they just couldn´t pronounce Tobias Hysen´s name.