Graham Potter's Swedish Revival After 5-1 Victory Over Tunisia

Graham Potter walked out to Sweden training in Texas last week wearing a Stetson. It looked like a joke, a bit of World Cup dress-up in cowboy country.

It also looked like a man being typecast. The coach on his third big job in under two years, twice sacked, supposedly nursing his career in football’s last-chance saloon.

Then came Monterrey.

Under the lights at Estadio Monterrey in Mexico, the hat stayed at home but the statement arrived. Sweden ripped Tunisia apart, a 5-1 win that felt like a message as much as a result. This was ruthless, sharp, and utterly unlike the hesitant side that stumbled through qualifying.

For Potter, discarded by Chelsea and then West Ham, this was not a script many had written for him. Certainly not this quickly.

“You never know, that's the truth,” he said afterwards, the scoreline still sinking in. “You never know how things are going to go. We were optimistic because we felt confident in the work. But until the game is played you don't know for sure. That's the beauty of sport. We are delighted with how we performed tonight and it's a great start for us.”

A great start, and an unlikely one when you rewind just a few months.

From rock bottom to a five-goal statement

The numbers from qualifying were grim. Sweden scored four goals in the entire group stage. They did not win a single game. They finished bottom behind Switzerland, Kosovo and Slovenia. Automatic qualification disappeared on Jon Dahl Tomasson’s watch, and by the time Potter arrived in October, the damage was locked in.

They sneaked into the play-offs on the back of a Uefa Nations League ranking of 34. It felt like a technicality, not a springboard.

Yet that ranking gave Potter a door back into the international game and a chance to repair his reputation. Sweden beat Ukraine. Then Poland. Suddenly a nation that had missed out on Qatar stood on the brink of another World Cup. They walked through.

Fast forward to Mexico and the contrast is stark. Five goals in one night, more than in the entire qualifying group. Tunisia, ranked 56th in the world, were overwhelmed. Sweden looked like a team unburdened, almost unrecognisable from the side that had trudged through the autumn.

The pressure that had followed Potter from Chelsea to West Ham did not vanish. He had won just six of 23 Premier League games with the Hammers before his September dismissal. The narrative was clear: Brighton was the outlier, the big jobs were too big.

In Monterrey, that story met resistance.

Back where he became “very Swedish”

This, in a way, is a homecoming. Not to Solihull, but to the country where Potter built his name and his ideas.

He is back in Sweden, the place where Ostersunds FK rose with him from the fourth tier to the Allsvenskan, where they won a domestic cup and walked into Europe for the first time in their history. Those seven years shaped him more than any Premier League touchline.

“I feel very Swedish when I'm working,” he told BBC Sport before the tournament. “I even look a bit Swedish. Two of my children were born in Sweden. I had seven unforgettable years at Ostersunds, with memories that will stay with me for life.

“I came from the fourth tier of Swedish football, which is quite low, and worked my way up through the system to the Allsvenskan.

“You almost become Swedish in a coaching sense because of the experiences you have. I think it has definitely helped.

“Now I'm working for the Swedish FA as head coach of the national team, so I feel very Swedish.”

The Instagram posts of lakes, forests and Nordic novels tell one story. The football told another in Monterrey. This has not been a sabbatical disguised as a national job. The work has been meticulous, and the payoff was clear in the way Sweden attacked.

Isak, Gyokeres and a frontline with teeth

The biggest boost sits up front. A fully fit Alexander Isak changes Sweden’s ceiling. The Liverpool striker, a £125m centrepiece, looked every bit the elite forward they needed. His understanding with Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres gave Sweden a cutting edge they simply did not have in qualifying.

They both scored. They both assisted each other. It was slick, instinctive, expensive – and exactly what Potter would have dreamed of when he saw the draw.

This is an attack that can trouble anyone if it stays healthy. For a country returning to the World Cup stage after missing 2022, the sight of two Premier League forwards dovetailing in their opening game will echo far beyond Monterrey.

Behind them, the project is still young. Only Victor Lindelof has played at a World Cup before; Kristoffer Nordfelt watched from the bench in Russia in 2018. The rest of the squad is learning on the fly, and Potter has to weld newcomers, returnees and veterans into something resilient enough to withstand better opposition than Tunisia.

Yet in this expanded format, five goals and three points leave Sweden in a strong position to reach the last 32. They have given themselves room to breathe.

That breathing space will not last long.

Netherlands looming, history whispering

Netherlands arrive on Saturday, one of the favourites, and a very different examination. Tunisia folded; the Dutch rarely do. Potter knows it.

“We just focus on what we can do, we focus on our performances,” he said after the game. “It doesn't matter what people think from the outside or opinions.

“That's the beauty of the World Cup everyone has predictions and forecasts but we have to focus on our job and how we play as a team.

“We will meet another top team at the weekend who are one of the favourites for the competition.”

The history books offer their own subplot. Sweden’s best World Cup finishes are two third places. In 1958, under another Englishman, George Raynor, on home soil. In 1994, when the tournament was held in the USA – the same country that now hosts part of this edition.

Those echoes will not win a tackle or finish a chance. But they do add a certain symmetry to Potter’s journey: an English coach, shaped by Swedish football, trying to take a proud football nation back into the latter stages of a World Cup.

For now, he walks into training in a cowboy hat and walks out of Monterrey with a 5-1 win, a rejuvenated attack and a team that suddenly looks alive.

Last-chance saloon? On this evidence, Graham Potter has just ordered another round.