A CHANCE TO SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY
England fans have been celebrating their team’s run in Russia with the phrase: ‘It’s coming home’. But when the Three Lions face Sweden in a quarter-final, their job will be far from easy. With the Swedes enjoying a better record in their recent meetings, HT looks at how the two teams stack-up:
STICK TO GAMEPLAN
With three at the back and fullback playing further up, England are set up to play attacking football. But against Colombia they took the foot off the pedal, trying to protect the 1-0 lead which allowed the South Americans to come back into the match.
Gareth Southgate has to believe in his players to keep making those forward runs rather than sit back and defend a scoreline — which is not in the DNA of this attackminded team.
BREAKING THE BACK
While England may fancy their chances against Sweden, it would be a difficult task to breach one of the best defences in this World Cup.
Sweden won’t be adventurous,
trying to hit on the counter, and England would have to come up with a plan to break their resolve. England’s inability to break through an airtight defence was evident in games against Tunisia and Colombia.
FINAL BALL CRUCIAL
The Swedes have no problem allowing sides to attack them down the flanks, betting on themselves to deal with any crosses or low balls.
England will have noted how Germany switched the ball quickly from flank to flank, but the final ball must be of very high quality if it is to trouble the Swedish defence.
PROVEN RECORD
Victory over Sweden would hand England a first semi-final spot since 1990 but the former have been going from strength to strength with each match since the qualifying started.
In the last 12 months, Sweden finished ahead of the Netherlands in the European World Cup qualifiers, beat Italy in the subsequent play-offs and qualified from the group ahead of defending champions Germany.
England have only beaten
Sweden in two of their last 15 meetings. Their most recent meeting was in a friendly in November 2012 in which the mercuial Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored all four goals in a 4-2 victory for the Scandinavians.