Would be the night of the great return

For a year, they have been nagging about matches that deserve an audience and how a pity it is that certain football moments are not immortalized in people’s bodies and remain in the way they only do if you were there and then. A derby that is also a league final, a decisive goal in the final minutes or that your team wins a title are experiences you remember regardless of whether you were on site or at home on the couch. But you remember them in different ways, you know them in different ways.

For a year, they have been nagging about the matches that deserved an audience.

This match was one of those matches. Or. It should have been.

* * *

It is a patient Sweden at first, you hold the ball but hardly get any major surfaces to do anything meaningful on. Instead, Georgia manages to get a nod on goal and a free kick before Sweden makes any further sense. They would be the big favorite in this match, but it is the away team that is most dangerous when they go on the counterattack. Once, twice, as many times as you like.

Hello. This is Zlatan’s big comeback, it’s a nation that has never even been close to a championship that stands on the other side, he who everything is about right now sang for the fff national anthem and forms attacking pair with a guy who was barely born when he made his debut in this national team.

Here will crackle, flash, Sweden will burst up and thunder towards a European Championship summer where anything can happen. All the conditions, even this country’s best players of all time are there.

Instead, it is unbalanced, shaky, Zlatan is down and clears the ball from his own penalty area. What is going on?

Many times during the first half hour at Friends arena, Sweden is dangerously close to a real failure start on what is the most powerful comeback we have experienced, in the World Cup qualifiers, in this entire national team year.

Then Zlatan takes down a ball, turns around and elegantly presents it to Claesson who completely pushes himself forward and throws in 1-0. Here. Now we get the match we have been waiting for. Or. We should get it.

* * *

There were a few good things about this match. Filip Helander seems to be able to calm the center-back anxiety somewhat, Viktor Claesson is basically the same player as he was before the knee injury and look, this team has more goalkeepers than Robin Olsen!

But it was not much more.

Albin Ekdal was substituted and injured himself at about the same time, most of the offensive creators created virtually nothing against a nation you should be able to go out and drive over. Zlatan was replaced after 83 minutes where you could barely see the smoke from him and the most important thing that happened today was that Spain crossed against Greece while the small crowd “audience” in the form of journalists and allies tried to understand what Sweden was doing. This match promised so much but kept nothing.

This would have been a huge night. It was an evening.