PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Sweden has had a very good start in the Nations League.
And Jon Dahl Tomasson is still undefeated in match context.
But now unexpected criticism is being directed at Sweden’s new national team captain.
Danish Jon Dahl Tomasson has been promoted to the new job as national team captain for Sweden. After four competitive matches, he is still unbeaten and Sweden lead their Nations League group after three wins and a draw.
Sweden’s success
Admittedly, there are matches that Sweden should win, as they play in Group C, but the job must still be done. Blågult has also scored 11 goals in four games and only conceded three goals.
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However, the 2-2 away match against Slovakia stings, when Sweden lost a 2-0 lead. But despite the men’s national team’s fine start to the Nations League, clear criticism is now being directed at national team captain Tomasson.
Concern for Tomasson
The DN journalist Johan Esk compares the Dane with the former national team captain Erik Hamren and above all how Jon Dahl Tomasson wants to highlight the players and is always so positive.
“Probably because it’s fun with positive people, but when it comes to national team captains for the Swedish men’s national team, we got an overdose in the early 2010s,” he writes in a column for Dagens Nyheter.
“Long before Erik Hamrén’s scarf started to resemble a stranglehold, a few years before his words echoed hollowly, he breathed optimism into the environment around the team. Sometimes it seems that the Swedish football public has forgotten or repressed the feeling”.
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The Swedish columnist still thinks that the new national team captain still has a lot to prove.
“If you look ahead, Tomasson’s national team has not yet shown anything that makes it feel reasonable that Sweden should beat teams on the (upper) shelf in critical situations,” writes Esk.
“I’m not saying it won’t happen, just that the victories Sweden brought Tomasson have come against too weak teams to know what they’re worth.”
So far, teams like Azerbaijan, Estonia and Slovakia have not been good enough gauges to show how the Swedish national team has changed since Tomasson took over.
“If the high, hard pressure doesn’t bite against a good team. When the shaky backline is pressured by real opponents. Then we will find out what kind of national team Sweden has under Jon Dahl Tomasson”, writes Johan Esk in his column.
“Winning a group at the Nations League’s C level is just shy of passing the line.”
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