Sweden traveled to Australia to attend an international match for training.
Federation captain Peter Gerhardson responds to the criticism and explains the trip.
– He says: We made the decision for many, many reasons.
In the summer of 2023, the FIFA World Cup will be held in Australia and New Zealand.
Nine months before the tournament, the Swedish national team traveled to Australia for an international training match, in the middle of the club team’s season, against one of the host nations.
Sportbladet columnist Christopher Bergstrom is critical of the trip. He chose to leave the environmental aspect out of his critique and instead called it: “From a mathematical point of view, the dumbest thing we’ve done”.
You always have a right to think about things, and then there is always the question of how much we should take or what we should do about it. We have a game tomorrow and we made this decision for many, many reasons, says the captain of the national team Peter Gerhardson.
Gerhardson: I have to go back
One of the reasons Gerhardsson mentioned is to meet countries outside Europe.
We can’t count on them coming and visiting us all the time. This is out of respect for the adversaries who come to us, as Australia did. They are coming to Europe, so we have to invite them back. And when it became clear that the World Cup would be held in Australia, this was the best opportunity, says the captain of the national team.
Sweden was only required to play one international match so the players could fly home with their club teams on Sunday to adapt to the changing time again.
Practice changing the time
During this week’s press meetings, the national team players received questions about the time change. Many of them described it as a challenge they hope to learn from before this summer’s world championships.
– You can never read experience. I was in New Zealand two weeks ago. Seems it was easier to get here now. Gerhardson says experience is important.
Sweden meets Australia at 04:45 on Saturday, Swedish time.