A manager down on his luck after a second failure in quick succession, wondering what the future would hold. A national team struggling at the bottom of their qualifying group given a second chance through the vagaries of the Nations League. That national team happens to be the country where the manager made his name, inspiring a team from a town with a population of 50,000 to win the Swedish Cup.
So the two get together, doubting manager and doubting country, and somehow, less than six months after the nadir, they are going to the World Cup finals.
This is why sport tends to make such terrible films or novels. Write it down, plot it out, storyboard it and it seems ridiculous. Two outcasts who find strength in each other to achieve fulfilment against the odds? Come on. They do it with a last-gasp goal from a striker who has been doubted at his new club? It’s too much.
Except that it happened. Which is why Graham Potter, happy and relaxed in a way he never seemed to be at Chelsea or West Ham, described Sweden’s World Cup playoff victory against Poland on Tuesday as “the best night I’ve had in football”.
It is a fairy story with obvious caveats. Sweden were awful in qualifying. They drew two and lost four of six games, finishing behind Switzerland, Kosovo and Slovenia. It was after four of those that Potter came in, replacing Jon Dahl Tomasson. But the structure also allowed into the second phase of qualifying the four best Nations League group winners who had not qualified as of right or for the playoffs. In part, that repechage is designed to give the Nations League meaning and try to ensure major teams do not miss out (although Italy manage to keep finding cracks to fall through).
It also serves a more worthy purpose. Previously, a small country suddenly blessed with a gifted generation would be hamstrung by the coefficient: it could take a decade of improving results to get a draw that made qualification possible; this allows them a shortcut. What it wasn’t really designed for was for teams such as Sweden, who benefited from being bad enough in Nations League B in 2022-23 to be relegated. Their place in the World Cup qualifying playoffs was down to them topping their League C group in 2024-25, finishing above Slovakia, Estonia and Azerbaijan.
Potter acknowledged Sweden were fortunate to have a second chance. But they have done nothing wrong; they just got lucky within regulations agreed in advance and that everybody knew about. Having been granted that second chance, Sweden seized it.
When Potter took over, Sweden were in meltdown. Ravaged by injury and with confidence ebbing, they had lost three in a row without scoring. But Potter was in a bleak place. He had never seemed an entirely comfortable fit at Chelsea, but there was general sympathy for the timing of his dismissal, having just overseen an impressive Champions League victory against Borussia Dortmund. But West Ham had not gone well and the sense was he was unlikely to get another opportunity in the Premier League.
Three weeks after losing his job there came the Sweden offer. The first two games brought a 4-1 defeat by Switzerland and a 1-1 draw with Slovenia. But wins against Ukraine and Poland now have him going to the World Cup. “It shows how football and life can change,” Potter said on Tuesday. “You think you’ve hit the bottom and just then … the darkest hour is right before the dawn.”
The transformation has been remarkable, the extent to which Potter is credited for it is clear in the reverence in which Sweden fans hold him. Just to be a British journalist in Stockholm who had been to a few Potter press conferences was enough to draw a degree of reflected adulation. His work with Östersund, taking them to three promotions in seven years, is affectionately remembered.
Potter was evidently delighted and relieved. He brought his children, in Sweden kits, to sit in the front row of the press conference as he talked of the “out-of-body experience” of Viktor Gyökeres’s late winner. But he was also characteristically modest and keen to share the praise.
“Where the team was, the injuries, trying to bring everything together, the negative place the team was in, it’s been an incredible challenge,” he said.
“I want to thank all the staff who’ve supported me. We talked about doing it together and I think we have … we just had to start with the basics, get the team together, nothing too complicated.
“There’s enough quality there, enough talent, but you can’t talk about individual talent. It’s a team game and we saw tonight, especially with our supporters who were amazing, what we can achieve when we’re all together.”
Poland may wonder how two wins in qualifying somehow trumps six, but that does not undermine the power of the redemption story, of Sweden and of Potter. “My career has had some amazing nights and amazing experiences,” he said, “but to go to the World Cup … wow, this is incredible.”
