Yesterday France – my favourite for the title before the tournament – and Belgium won their querterfinals of the 2018 FIFA World Cup,
France beat two times World Champions Uruguay 2-0 and Belgium won over five times champions Brazil 2-1.
The semifinal France-Belgium will be a fantastic game.
The golden generation of Belgium facing the World Champions from 1998 France in what could become a classic football game.
Today, Sweden plays 1966 World Chanpion england and Croatia faces Russia for the remaining two quarterfinals. England and Croatia are big time favourites. Do we have a chance?
This Swedish team has proven to be hard to beat eleminating Netherlands, Italy, Germany from the tournament – and in addition having beaten France in the qualification, Portugal in a friendly away, plus Mexico and Switzerland in the World Cup so far. Can we win also over England? Nothing is impossible.
As Zlatan Ibrahimovic said yesterday, ‘We are not you, We are not like you. We are Sweden’.
There are different defintions and ways of showing sportsmanship, empathy and fairness.
Swedish star Emil Forsberg beat Swiss goalkeeper in the 2018 World Cup taling Sweden to the quarterfinals.
However, he received some help from Swiss defender Manuel Akanji that deflected the shot into his own goal. The goal became the eighth-finals only and when the Swedes cheered after the end signal, Akanji dropped into tears in his own half.
Several Swedish players arrived quickly to comfort him.
“It was well done by them,” said Akanji to Sportbladet after the match.
Now the Swedish players’ sporting gestures have been highlighted in foreign media.
“Respect”, writes Fox Sports on Twitter along with a video clip where Albin Ekdal, Mikael Lustig and Gustav Svensson are consoling the Swiss.
“Sportability”, writes Fox football account FoxSoccer on twitter.
It is not the first time in the tournament that Sweden is celebrated for its sportiness. After the premiership in the World Cup, several South Koreans were comforted by Swedish players.
“Pure class of the Swedish players,” wrote the British BBC.
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