As a Canadian I'm just curious as to how things work over there as far as soccer goes. I believe it is the number one sport in the country and I'm wondering how the academy's work which is the system used in most european country's which uses academys from the club teams. Also how do the Swedish clubs do in international competition against other clubs from other country's such as Spain etc ? Thanks in advance for responses
As a Canadian I'm just curious as to how things work over there as far as soccer goes. I believe it is the number one sport in the country and I'm wondering how the academy's work which is the system used in most european country's which uses academys from the club teams. Also how do the Swedish clubs do in international competition against other clubs from other country's such as Spain etc ? Thanks in advance for responses
The sheer population competition with other football nations makes football/soccer a very difficult sport for Sweden to compete in internationally, but there's a ton of interest for sure. It varies, but we *still* ride on a bit of a success wave ever since the US World Championships in 1994 when we finished third, with the most beloved sport's team we have. It's like our Lake Placid, or whatever, despite "only" finishing third. These days swedish players are having troubles establishing themselves in the higher leagues in Europe, but there's plenty of players in mid-Serie A level, Dutch league, and so on.
The national league is quite poor, the players who develop into something good get snatched right away by some other team, so all our talent goes abroad, which is obviously a problem.
The sheer population competition with other football nations makes football/soccer a very difficult sport for Sweden to compete in internationally, but there's a ton of interest for sure. It varies, but we *still* ride on a bit of a success wave ever since the US World Championships in 1994 when we finished third, with the most beloved sport's team we have. It's like our Lake Placid, or whatever, despite "only" finishing third. These days swedish players are having troubles establishing themselves in the higher leagues in Europe, but there's plenty of players in mid-Serie A level, Dutch league, and so on.
The national league is quite poor, the players who develop into something good get snatched right away by some other team, so all our talent goes abroad, which is obviously a problem.
thanks for the input . How do the Swedish youth clubs do against elite clubs like Ajax or Barca etc in tournaments?
thanks for the input . How do the Swedish youth clubs do against elite clubs like Ajax or Barca etc in tournaments?
They are usually beaten badly but there have been some exceptions. Malmö tied Milan 2-2 last year in an exhibition, not sure if they used their best players or not though.
They are usually beaten badly but there have been some exceptions. Malmö tied Milan 2-2 last year in an exhibition, not sure if they used their best players or not though.
Strange I would have thought based on the quality of their national team that they would be close to or on par with the elite countries. I have heard Lisbon has arguably the top youth teams in Europe that almost never lose.
Strange I would have thought based on the quality of their national team that they would be close to or on par with the elite countries. I have heard Lisbon has arguably the top youth teams in Europe that almost never lose.
The youth national teams do pretty well, not sure about the youth team clubs though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Midas
When i lived there the only players people talked about were
Zlatan Ibrahimović. Classic Swedish name
Rosenberg. Was with Werder Bremen but i think he was put down to Tier 2?
Well, then again, there's quite a lot of hockeyplayers without "canadian" names. Gretzky, Sakic, Chelios etc
Strange, I can't recall Rosenberg ever being popular, since he was always put aside in favor of other strikers in the national team.
Swedish junior soccer is miles and miles away from swedish junior hockey. I mean theres not thatmuch bigger population in Portugal or Holland, but we are not even remotely close of producing anyway near as good players. Theres probably tons to be done about the devloping of players in Sweden, but as been mentioned the competition is very hard so maybe we get what is expected of a reasonabe small country in the north.
As a Canadian I'm just curious as to how things work over there as far as soccer goes. I believe it is the number one sport in the country and I'm wondering how the academy's work which is the system used in most european country's which uses academys from the club teams. Also how do the Swedish clubs do in international competition against other clubs from other country's such as Spain etc ? Thanks in advance for responses
Are you thinking of having one of your children play for an academy in Sweden? I was looking into this a bit last year but my son is still a bit too young.
Are you thinking of having one of your children play for an academy in Sweden? I was looking into this a bit last year but my son is still a bit too young.
No not quite just curious, but definately a country I could see myself living in.
Football (gtfo with soccer!) is bar non the most popular sport in Sweden, although Hockey is really popular as well and most other winter sports.
IFK Gothenburg (same city as hockey team Fröunda which have several NHL stars, Erik Karlsson, H Lundqvist, Alfie, Loui Eriksson) won as the first Nordic country a major title in 1982. And again 1987, the equivalent to todays Champions League. However since that it has been pretty much downhill since Sweden could not really keep the pace with the rapidly growing economy in the European football. Now we're like a third world country only supporting the "developed" football markets.
In the Uefa cup (the second cup in line after Champions League), we had Elfsborg in 2007 qualify for the grouping stage. They had a pretty decent team led by the national team assistant captain Anders Svensson.
Usually the other team dominated quite a bit, the Valencia game was the year prior or after they made the group stage I reckon. And we had Helsingborg beating Inter in the qualifying stage of Champions League over a decade ago, and as previous being mentioned Malmö-Milan and so on.
Nowadays Denmark and Norwegian is quite a head of ous, BUT NOT our national team, just the domestic league. Köpenhamn and Rosenborg I think got the most success lately (last 10 years)
The Sweden national team hasn't been very good tho, in my opinion, tho in Euro 2004 championship we actually had quite a nice tournament, was inches from beating out Holland.
Academy wise it's about same as for hockey, if you have some kind of merits you can apply to hockey/football/handball/floorball/skiing etc-high school. And then you have the youth teams, usually the ones in highest league draws most talents to them, however a club that is not in the highest league with a very good track record on talents produced today is IFK Värnamo. University/college sport doesn't excist almost in Sweden, some offer benefits as more flexible schedules for those at a high level, at my university we a world championship gold winner in orienteering and several from the skiing national team.
The clubs with very good academy in Europe besides in portugal as you mentioned, I think Barcelona would be one, and previously Ajax (Amsterdam, NL) who actually was more impressing than Barcelona IMO.
thanks for the input . How do the Swedish youth clubs do against elite clubs like Ajax or Barca etc in tournaments?
Checked some results from Nike Premier Cup, which is a big international U15 club tournament. For the past 3 years, the Swedish teams have finished 20th, 12th and 10th of 20 teams in the Euro finals, which doesn't have teams from the bigger countries from what I've gathered.
Football (gtfo with soccer!) is bar non the most popular sport in Sweden, although Hockey is really popular as well and most other winter sports.
IFK Gothenburg (same city as hockey team Fröunda which have several NHL stars, Erik Karlsson, H Lundqvist, Alfie, Loui Eriksson) won as the first Nordic country a major title in 1982. And again 1987, the equivalent to todays Champions League. However since that it has been pretty much downhill since Sweden could not really keep the pace with the rapidly growing economy in the European football. Now we're like a third world country only supporting the "developed" football markets.
In the Uefa cup (the second cup in line after Champions League), we had Elfsborg in 2007 qualify for the grouping stage. They had a pretty decent team led by the national team assistant captain Anders Svensson.
Usually the other team dominated quite a bit, the Valencia game was the year prior or after they made the group stage I reckon. And we had Helsingborg beating Inter in the qualifying stage of Champions League over a decade ago, and as previous being mentioned Malmö-Milan and so on.
Nowadays Denmark and Norwegian is quite a head of ous, BUT NOT our national team, just the domestic league. Köpenhamn and Rosenborg I think got the most success lately (last 10 years)
The Sweden national team hasn't been very good tho, in my opinion, tho in Euro 2004 championship we actually had quite a nice tournament, was inches from beating out Holland.
Academy wise it's about same as for hockey, if you have some kind of merits you can apply to hockey/football/handball/floorball/skiing etc-high school. And then you have the youth teams, usually the ones in highest league draws most talents to them, however a club that is not in the highest league with a very good track record on talents produced today is IFK Värnamo. University/college sport doesn't excist almost in Sweden, some offer benefits as more flexible schedules for those at a high level, at my university we a world championship gold winner in orienteering and several from the skiing national team.
The clubs with very good academy in Europe besides in portugal as you mentioned, I think Barcelona would be one, and previously Ajax (Amsterdam, NL) who actually was more impressing than Barcelona IMO.
Malmö FF played in Euro Leauge last year and 1979 they reach Champions Leauge final.
Checked some results from Nike Premier Cup, which is a big international U15 club tournament. For the past 3 years, the Swedish teams have finished 20th, 12th and 10th of 20 teams in the Euro finals, which doesn't have teams from the bigger countries from what I've gathered.
Those results don't seem so great, its strange that a decently strong country nationally does not have strong academy's that are up to par with the best in the world.
Those results don't seem so great, its strange that a decently strong country nationally does not have strong academy's that are up to par with the best in the world.
Swedish football players are late bloomers compared to other Nations. We just let the kids "have fun" a lot longer. There's no academies snatchïng up every promising 12 year old here. And it also has a lot to do with economy. Swedish clubs have to be owned by at least 51% of the club members. That makes it near impossible for some rich guy to buy a team and make it a force. Who wants to buy a team when you can only buy 49% of it anyway? It's a rule that's heavily discussed(it also involves hockey) but it's just the Swedish way of doing things. "No one is bigger than the team" mentality. For better or worse.
Our U21 team is much stronger as of late though. We went to the semis in the euros not long ago, losing on penalty kicks against England. And last tournament we fell just short in qualification(only 8 teams qualify). Now we're on the verge of qualifying to the next Euro U21 aswell. Currently ranked 5th in Europe(only behind greats like England, Spain, Netherlands, Italy), which is very good compared to the Men's team(12th). So we have a lot of talents right now. But most of them goes to play in the Netherlands and such to continue their development, where the money is.
