Clrnc wrote:
No surprise Sweden is doing so well without Zlatan really. Everytime he plays they are like playing with 10 man with minimal running up top.
I think that's unfair Clrnc. It's been the dominating narrative in the newspapers over here too, because it's going well right now, but in my opinion it's a shallow analysis. Sweden used to play well with Zlatan, and then they didn't for a while. He literally took them to one Euro and one World Cup on his own. People praised Sweden after that game against England that ended 4-2 but Zlatan scored all four goals (including that bicycleta) while his teammates mostly looked on in awe. He single-handedly defeated Denmark in the Euro playoff when there wasn't a single Swedish player on the pitch other than himself who would have gotten into the Danish team. He was literally a one-man army. Not even Ronaldo has carried a national team that way.
The only thing that changed was the players around him. Sweden probably had their worst generation of footballers in 50 years, and Zlatan was the only one who papered over the cracks. They wouldn't have been better without him. They would have just ranked outside the FIFA top 50 instead of in the top 20. What we're seeing right now is players like Augustinsson and Nilsson-Lindelöf breaking through; players who were part of the team that won the U21 World Cup. They're young and hungry and technically on a completely different level compared to the old players they replaced.
