DALLAS, June 25 : Sweden coach Graham Potter made several changes to his line-up for Thursday’s World Cup match against Japan and was rewarded with a 1-1 draw that sees his side through to the knockout stage as one of the best third-placed teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following their 5-1 defeat by the Netherlands in their previous game, Potter replaced goalkeeper Kristoffer Nordfeldt with Jacob Widell Zetterstrom and moved captain Victor Lindelof into midfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His decision to start Anthony Elanga also paid off when the winger netted the equaliser. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Everyone’s been active in the organisation of the team, so it didn’t feel too much of a change for me, although I understand when you change the goalkeeper and you move Victor into midfield, it can be (a big change),” Potter told a news conference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If you’ve got the players with you, if you’ve got support from people outside, then you’ve got a chance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Potter had to do more shuffling during the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An injury to centre-back Isak Hien saw him replaced in the first half, with Lindelof dropping into defence and Lucas Begvall coming into the midfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lindelof then succumbed to cramp late on and had to be swapped out for Carl Starfeldt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elanga’s equaliser ensured that the Swedes finished on four points, with the Netherlands winning Group F on seven points and Japan runners-up on five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sweden’s opponents in the round of 32 will only be decided in the coming days but Potter said he was just happy they were in the knockout phase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It’s a tricky one, because you can second guess – until we know, we won’t know,” he added. “We have to probably recover the players first and make sure that physically we’re in a good place for whoever we play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If you’d have said to me when we first came that that would be the challenge we face, I would have absolutely taken it, so we’re looking forward to it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DALLAS, June 25 : Sweden coach Graham Potter made several changes to his line-up for Thursday’s World Cup match against Japan and was rewarded with a 1-1 draw that sees his side through to the knockout stage as one of the best third-placed teams. Following their 5-1 defeat by the Netherlands in their previous game, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12903"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":418391,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418390\/revisions\/418391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}