Bathe in geysers, flying away on the ash clouds and rename volcanoes after Lars Lagerback.
Island defeats Holland, and a quiet man from Steamers gets very difficult things to see right damn easy out.
His Secret? That he did not have any secrets.
It’s not easy to get a little nostalgic.
A few plus degrees and a wet crosswind over the stadium. A renowned resistance crashing right into the hard uppstyrda 4-4-2 ranks. A durable collective that works together well-known guests from down south.
A once used the Sweden win games that felt this way. Now we do not do it anymore, but it is more about our own choices and much less about football’s actual development.
There’s plenty of people who condemned both game model and management style as old-fashioned, but even if I not to come here and say that I know Lars Lagerback inside and out, I’m sure in all cases to two things when it comes to him.
Is there anything he could not care less, it’s what an a faceless crowd thinks. And is there anything he cares even less if it’s what football is seen as trendy just this semester.
We’re some sort of colleagues these days, so it happens quite often that someone asks me to tell you how he really is, when the lights are off and the cameras turned off.
I have never some exciting answers to come by.
No hidden agendas
What you see is in fact the rest of us get. Lars Lagerback is not the man who works with double faces or hidden agendas or false diplomacy.
His greatness as a football coach is not some Machiavellian media maneuvering, or for that matter in some tactical wizardry. If you just listened to him during the last years of television broadcasting – or indeed the ten Swedish landslagsår that preceded them – so you also know how the basics of his football philosophy looks like.
Straight, quick passing game up against two central strikers. Compact, aggressive defense game that gives priority to steer away from the opponent’s goal. Nothing excessive risk-taking, no ball stud in the wrong game surfaces.
Easy? Maybe so. Clear? Effective? Without any hesitation whatsoever.
I’m not saying it would always get the same effect everywhere, but it worked in Sweden yesterday and it works besvisligen also quite unlikely good in Iceland today.
Medelpadsgatan Kingdom mentality has proven to work very well together with the Icelandic. I know that Lagerback is extremely fond of the group at his disposal right now, that he feels the players’ work ethic, loyalty and sacrifice that the conditions for the phenomenal changes he himself orchestrated.
At one time, it was also that kind of core values we used to summarize the
Swedish football, but when we count all the profits from the swings, it’s not without simultaneously also thinking about the cost of the rides.
Are you supposed to summarize our football of today need Unfortunately, use of a different set of keywords.
But, no, now revolves actually not this about Sweden, but now it’s about an Island that took the victory, perhaps their entire football history’s greatest.
Never any talk
Championships medalists were in the village, Laugardalsvöllur received with their wind, their tracks and their ball-kicking Icelandic horses.
There was never really any major snack.
They may have come from Manchester United, Milan and Bayern Munich, but then they did not match the home team in either the intensity, accuracy or determination was never particularly close to any points.
Hall Fredsson outshone Robben, Sigthorsson was better than Van Persie, Bjarnason munched up Sneijder.
Gylfi Sigurdsson spent a second at putting a penalty, and a second at pushing up a stray corner of the roof of the net – then he continued to close the spaces and provide support during the game the other 90 minutes.
There is Lars Stock Bäcks kind of superstar.
For more than six years then rushed a rusigt Russia right across a startling convenient Sweden. The match marked the beginning of the end of Lars Stock Bäcks time Swedish national coach, Guus Hiddink and was hailed as the sorcerer.
It was then that. The years that have passed have treated some football coaches better than others.
Now seems Hiddink as both tired and poorly updated, while a 66-year-old forester from Steamers looks like a fresh future visionary.
Someone EM-place is not yet clear, but it Lars Lagerback has done with Iceland nonetheless is already counted among the 2000s truly great teams deeds.
I’m really looking forward to talking through the miracle match with him , but I think I already know about how it will sound when he limps into the editorial collection next Tuesday.
“What a fucking thing,” we will get excited. “Did they arrest the statue yet? ‘.
Lars Lagerback will smile his introspective smile, then turn away from a little deterrence.
– It was a fun evening, one can safely say , but it’s this that is so fascinating about soccer …
