Coach: Lars Lagerback
Tactics: Efficient and potent up front.
Star Player: Zlatan Ibrahimovic - Juventus star who is strong and has wonderful feet.
Verdict: Always tricky to play against, Sweden have enough class throughout the side to present a problem to any opponent. Freddie Ljungberg can be relied upon to provide goals from midfield and Ibrahimovic and the evergreen Henrik Larsson are prolific at club level. Should make it through the group.
Ten things you didn’t know about Sweden
1. There are over 100,000 lakes in Sweden.
2. In their first three years, the Swedish pop group Abba sold more records than the Beatles.
3. An old Swedish law called ‘Every Man's Right’ means that it is legal to visit somebody else's land, to bathe in their lake, travel by boat on their river, and pick the wild flowers, mushrooms, berries, fallen cones, acorns and nuts you find there.
3. Sweden’s coastline is the longest in Europe, stretching 7,300 km.
4. Sweden is one of the top consumers per capita of ketchup in the world
5. All alcohol has to be bought in off-licences except for class A beers (less than 3%) which can be bought in supermarkets.
6. The Swedish chef featured in the muppet show did not actually speak Swedish at all but made up gibberish.
7. Contrary to popular belief, there are no polar bears in Sweden.
8. People in Sweden eat about 1 kg/person of ham each Christmas
9. Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5 p.m. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize 'this' was the day of the changeover.
10. The name IKEA comes from a clever acronym using the initials of the founder, Ingvar Kamprad, who was from a family farm called Elmtaryd, which was near the village of Agunnaryd. The acronym is for a Swedish phrase but it turns out to be the same in English, Ingvar Kamprad's Economical Alternative.
