The pre-match discourse focused almost exclusively on Sweden’s luxury strikers. Graham Potter was asked three times about Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyokeres, about how he could squeeze the best from his uber-talents. Ronald Koeman was asked whether he was scared by them. “We’re not scared,” he said, and so it proved. Instead this was an afternoon in Houston when Sunderland’s Brian Brobbey out-did them both.
Brobbey scored two first-half goals which took the game away from Sweden, before the excellent Cody Gakpo added another two and Crysencio Summerville topped this 5-1 win. Perhaps most importantly, Brobbey showed the striker’s instincts that have been marked out as the great weakness of this Dutch team, a side full of defensive steel and midfield class but who supposedly lack a killer in the box.
