The Potter Effect: Sweden’s Quiet Rise into World Cup Relevance

Sweden were supposed to disappear quietly.

Instead, somewhere between Graham Potter’s appointment last autumn, a pair of gritty playoff performances against Ukraine and Poland, and a revealing friendly against Greece, something shifted. The noise around Europe’s established contenders drowned them out, but Sweden have begun assembling the kind of dangerous attacking identity tournament football occasionally rewards.

No one is suggesting a rerun of 1994. Not yet. But dismissing Sweden now would be a mistake.