England vs Paraguay 1-0

A 1-0 victory was good enough for England to get 3 points. However, the match left the English asking more questions about their team than being particularly happy. Paraguay isn’t the strongest of sides. England creeped to victory rather than having a convincing performance. Any thing can happen in football but I don’t see England causing a serious threat in the competition if they don’t improve on the pitch drastically.

Sweden vs Trinidad and Tobago 0-0

The Soca Warriors are celebrating. 10 men Trinidad and Tobago have held off Sweden. Sweden dominated possession. Sweden attacked a lot. However, they hit very few shots on target and nothing materialised into goals. There was the very good defending by T and T and the excellent keeping by Shaka Hislop. It is all about scoring goals though. Maybe Sweden should not have kept that extra man marking Stern John and had attacked more. The English will be very happy with this result. It makes qualifying for them a lot easier!

Argentina vs Côte d’Ivoire 2-1

The match was expected to, and produced, the best match of the tournament so far. The pace was faster than any thing we have seen in the tournament. There was controversy as well when the ball crossed the line (looked like that to me at least) but the referee did not give a goal to Argentina early on. That did not matter as Argentina scored two more. Drogba pulled one back to make things exciting in the last 10 minutes. Ivory Coast have a lot of talent and would have easily qualified in most other groups. It can still be possible as they can give Holland a run for their money.

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For part 13 of the series, I caught up with Nicklas Andersson from Sweden. Nicke is 27 years old, lives in Sweden and follows the domestic league and the national team closely. He attended his first big championship in 2000 when he went to Euro 2000 in Holland/Belgium. Sweden was a big disappointment but the atmosphere was fantastic and he knew then, when he returned home, that this was just the first of many visits at big championships.

He has followed the World Cup since 1986 when he was seven and then his favourites where West Germany and Denmark, especially Danish midfielder Frank Arnesen. He has watched almost every WC game since that on TV. This summer will be his first live World Cup as Nicklas has the tickets to Swedish games from group stage until the semi-finals!

I thank Nicklas for agreeing to the interview.

Tell us a bit about the Swedish football history and the football culture which exists.

Football is the biggest sport in Sweden and has been so forever even if ice-hockey for some periods has been almost as popular. Sweden has been a strong team in most period with weak phases in between. The biggest successes is the silver medal when we hosted the world cup 1958. Brazil won but the Swedish people became fans of Brazilian football and Pelé. 1950 and 1958, Sweden finished third. The bronze from 1994 is considered one of our biggest sport moments ever and it was the start of a renaissance in football for Sweden. The domestic league has seen spectator rise from 300 in 1994 t0 more then 10000 on an average.

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