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Author: Andresco
Date: 06-09-2005, 23:58
Edited by: Andresco
at: 07-09-2005, 00:00

Since Sweden is so rarely discussed around here...

While Swedish club football does miserably in Europe, there seems to be no stopping the national team. Apart from the 0-1 at home to Croatia, the Swedes seem to win just about everything right now, and are surpassed in WC-Qual goalscoring (26 goals) only by Czech Rep (28) and Portugal (30), both of which have two easy teams in their seven-team groups though, as opposed to Sweden’s one, Malta.

Sweden has reached three consecutive tournaments (00, 02, 04), and since Lars Lagerbäck took over as coach, out of 16 away qualifying games, Sweden have won 13, drawn 3, lost none and done 34-4 in goals. So everything looks fine in front of the game in Budapest Wednesday. It seems that two wins will be enough to qualify as the best group runner-up, so the big Croatia game in October could prove not so decisive after all.

In fact, during the qualifying stages to the last 4 tournaments (EC 00, WC 02, EC 04, WC 06), Sweden has by far the best record of average points taken per game.

(team………games……W-D-L……goals……points……pts/game)

1 Swe………33………26-5-2………75-9………83………2,52
2 Por………29………21-7-1………95-15………70………2,41
3 Cze………39………30-3-6………97-29………93………2,38
4 Spa………33………23-8-2………94-16………77………2,33
5 Fra………25………17-7-1………54-13………58………2,32
6 Nth………29………21-4-4………77-19………67………2,31
7 Ger………26………17-7-2………52-20………58………2,23
8 Eng………33………21-9-3………60-19………72………2,18
9 Cro………33………21-9-3………61-20………72………2,18
10 Ita………31………19-9-3………56-18………66………2,13

After watching Malmö FF lose miserably to Thun and Djurgården get kicked out by Cork City, this table makes for a nice change.

Author: porto-1978
Date: 07-09-2005, 13:34

Andresco, "only by Czech Rep (28) and Portugal (30), both of which have two easy teams in their seven-team groups though, as opposed to Sweden’s one, Malta."

It?s true that Portugal group have 7 nations, so more two games for them. About easy teams i don?t know if you consider Latvia or Estonia easy. Maybe not as much as it seems. Anyway, don?t forget Portugal draw 2-2 away with Liechenstein! Meanwhile, the game with more goals for Portugal was with the theoricly stronger team, Russia (7-1). More even than with Luxemburg (6-0) last weekend. So i just wanted to remember this: not always there?s a lot of goals with "easy" teams and not only there?s no goals with "strong" teams.

Meanwhile congratulations for Sweeden for their Nr 1. But to win the group would be better... Still advantage for Croatia.