Solbakken to the Swedes: – No more excuses!
– I think you’re complaining badly. If I were to play Swedish national team manager, I would put Olsen in goal, Krafth on the right and Augustinsson on the left back, they are all ready. I would have liked Lindelöf to stop, he is not ready, but next to him it is incredibly smooth. In central midfield it would be Cajuste (or Ekdal), Forsberg and Claesson, at the top Elanga, Kulusevski and Isak. I believe all those players and then you have trouble in one position, he said.
– There are also excellent coaches, short trips, great routine and a lot of championships. Stop the excuses! Well we play football and then we see who is the best.
There has been a lot of talk about the damage to the stoppage place in the Swedish squad, and about the four exclusions the team has so far incurred (two were against Serbia, two are against Norway). But apart from Lindelöf, Solbakken believes that the Swedes have their most important players available at Ullevaal.
Solbakken himself still has an injury-free squad. The situation is so good that he could lay off Brede Moe and send him to training camp with Bodø / Glimt.
Saturday’s training will be closed to outsiders after the warm-up, without the need for so many secrets between the layers.
Must endure a little
– I think it will be an even and close match where Sweden will have its periods and we ours. Of course, we must have a higher level than we had in the first place with Slovenia. If we play like that, we get very big problems, said Solbakken.
He has no objections to the Swede beating his chest with his strong qualifying statistics and points to Norway’s 22-year-long playoff drought.
– Before we come to the championship again, I can not say anything but that they are ahead of us. It does not help to win a match or two or three. I qualification, Sweden and Denmark have very strong traditions, we have none for a very long time. It determines the balance of power, and until we qualify again we will probably have to endure some messages, he said.
Messages between the players on the field have received attention in both countries after Erling Braut Haaland told what Aleksander Milosevic called him in the away match.
– That’s how it is sometimes, no matter who you play against, but it’s peanuts. It’s not something I spend a calorie on as a national team manager.
Swedish Christmas table
He expressed great respect for the job Janne Andersson and assistant Peter Wettergren have done with the Swedish team. Wettergren was in his time Solbakken’s assistant at FC Copenhagen.
– They have built a team with a strong base, a team you would recognize from match to match even if it did not have yellow suits. They are genuinely good football people who represent Sweden in a good way, Solbakken stated.
He does not think the formation change from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3, which has been much debated in Sweden, has made such a big difference, at least not defensively.
On the other hand, he thinks he was too kind when in 2016 he released Wettergren for the federal job.
– Peter is a fantastic guy, and the Swedish Football Association praised him too low. He costs 300,000, but he costs three million. Because we set him high, we gave him away for the price of a Swedish Christmas table. He was smart enough to meet me after we had won clearly and I was in a good mood, he said.