Five flaws – this leaves Hamrén sleepless

FotbollDirekt continues its campaign in front of the Euro 2012 in Poland/Ukraine. Today, we are proud to present our new columnist Sasa Ibrulj. Sasa will be our Euro 2012 correspondent – he will cover all the 16 teams and give an outside perspective on the Swedish team.
Today, Sasa starts off with a thorough look on Erik Hamréns squads performance against Serbia on Tuesday – and it´s bad news for the Swedes:

The match against rejuvenated and not especially good Serbian team showed that Erik Hamren still has a lot to work to do. Sweden did win, but failed to impress, and this performance signalized the things that must be improved if Blågult wants to fulfill expectations and reach the knockout stages…



It´s always a great thing to win in the last match before a major tournament – it gives your team the confidence, boost before the real thing, the public gets its own satisfaction and the atmosphere is enhanced. Things that every team needs. And Sweden did that part of the job properly. Now it´s time to use this match for its real purpose. To point out all the flaws. 



And it did. Five of them. 



1. The system



Ibrahimovic behind the striker? Let´s be clear – that is the best place to use Zlatan. Ibra loves to control things, and this position gives him the opportunity to do that. Zlatan is far more dangerous from here – he has a superb vision, good pass and ability to use the space. But, all this can work if he has the support, back and forth. This system needs a motile attacker, and that obviously is not Toivonen. He is not the type Hamren needs for this system. It is that simple. If you want this system to work, you must use the players that fit into it.

2. 

Responsibility



Good ball retention starts from the keeper. The system Hamren uses is based on possession and this team needs a ball. Then why do they hide from it? They have to start to build from the back, and for that to happen, defenders must take the responsibility with the ball. The key role in this have pair Källström-Svensson. They have to go back, take the ball – and responsibility – and show some creativity. This would move the whole team forward and open dozens of possibilities. After all, the second half proved this theory. Swedes tried to take the ball and play, and it all looked better.

3. Aggressiveness



If you ignore couple of (really) stupid tackles that Swedes made, they showed obvious lack of aggressiveness in this match. That static provides the opponent enough time to think and rethink what to do. Stats says that Serbs had 16 attempts yesterday, twelve of them out of the box. And this Serbia was not that good. Sweden can´t afford to leave this much space to French or English – unlike yesterday´s Serbia they will know how to use it. 



4. Pressing

Or better said, the reaction to the pressing. The Serbs played the role of Ukrainians yesterday, tried to press the back four and pry out the mistake, and in those moments the Swedish defense looked a bit shaky. As Jonathan Wilson pointed out in Guardian´s The Question, pressing is one of the crucial things in modern game. While strong teams (such as France, for instance) want to control the match through the possession, teams like Ukraine try to use its psychological factor and shock the opponent. Again, Swedes should stick to the basics – avoid the panic, look for the easiest and most obvious choice.



5. Set-pieces



Once again Sweden conceded after the corner and highlighted obvious problem. Similar to the goals they conceded against Iceland, Swedes looked like static observes of the events on the pitch. And that was not the only time their marking was awful in this match. But, as Zlatan Ibrahimovic said in the press conference after the match, the good thing is that this is something that can be corrected in the next six days.

Sasa Ibrulj is a freelance football writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sweden. His work was published in various international publications, World Soccer and The Blizzard among them. He is regular contributor to among others FourFourTwo Croatia and Mozzart Sport Serbia, and he´s an active blogger at The Football Ramble and SFUnion.net. You can follow him on Twitter: @sasaibrulj