The Swedish men's national team begins its qualifying trip to the European Championship finals in Hungary and Slovakia with matches against Romania in Partille and Kosovo in Pristina.
The third team in the qualifying group is Montenegro.
Magnus Grahn expects a successful qualifier and is looking forward to the qualifier premiere against Romania on Thursday.
SWEDEN
Strengths
- Good defense and strong in the counterattack.
Weaknesses
- Can get problems in the set up attacking game and become static.
In addition, many new players at nine meters who have few internationals.
Key player
- Jim Gottfridsson, who is a leader on the field.
Comment about Sweden
- Injuries to regular goalkeeper pairs create new challenges for new national team captain Glenn Solberg.
It will be very interesting to follow two debutants in Jonathan Carlsbogård and Alfred Jönsson.
ROMANIA
Strengths
- They are big in their defense.
The goalkeeper game with Mihai Popescu, among others, can be an unpleasant surprise for Sweden.
Weaknesses
- Get really good players in important positions.
Romania are quite immobile in their defensive game, which means that they can get into trouble if Sweden keeps up the pace in their attack.
Key player
- Mihai Popescu, goalkeeper.
Comment on Romania
- Romania has historically, since the 1960s, been a great handball nation.
But in the last ten years they have had a hard time getting a strong national team on the men's side.
Great focus has been placed on the women's side, where Romania belongs to the absolute world top.
The team Sweden meets on Tuesday has few foreign professionals, which means that they get few influencers in their national game.
This is how Sweden goes to the European Championships
- Sweden should relatively easily win this qualifying group, even if all away matches will be a challenge both on the pitch and on the side considering covid-19.