Sweden have boasted enviable strikeforces before. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrik Larsson dovetailed to great effect at Euro 2004 and should have gone further than a quarter-final exit to Netherlands on penalties. Sweden’s great post-war team was led by the AC Milan trio known as “Gre-No-Li” – Gren, Nordahl and Liedholm – who together won gold at the 1948 Olympics in London.
They have another potentially elite partnership in 2026, one that points to a strange paradox of this modern Sweden side. They are truly one of the worst teams at the World Cup, a team who were flattened in qualifying, who broke through the back door of the play-offs only because they were so bad, they had slipped down to Nations League C and were able to dominate a group of Slovakia, Estonia and Azerbaijan to book their spot.
