“We’ve been very spoiled with good attacking players, not just now but in our modern history. Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrick Larsson, Freddie Ljungberg at Arsenal of course. Then, in recent years, we have Alexander Isak, Dejan Kulusevski and of course, Viktor.<\/p>\n
“People in football knew about his capacity and all that, and the Premier League is such a followed league in Sweden, but it never quite felt like he had lift off with the national team. His time in Portugal had sort of gone under the radar – that’s not the case anymore.”<\/p>\n
Rewind the clock back to the end of 2025 and the sentiment towards the Swedish national team was completely different. <\/p>\n
Dead last in a qualifying group with Switzerland, Slovenia and Kosovo, reaching this summer’s tournament seemed a pipe dream. But Viktor’s goals in the Nations League in 2024\/25 meant there was a reprieve, a route via the playoffs where Ukraine and Poland lay in wait.<\/p>\n
“The qualification was terrible, a shambles. Graham Potter took over and we had two shots at reaching the World Cup, almost through the back door. <\/p>\n
“Viktor was outstanding, especially the first game against Ukraine. Then the match against Poland was the biggest Swedish game in 20 years, because there’s so much at stake. It was probably the most questioned and criticised Swedish national team in my 20 years as a journalist; everything felt terrible.<\/p>\n “It was like this generation is wasted. Are they going to miss out on yet another big competition? How can this be?<\/p>\n “It was quite a euphoric event, Viktor and the team stepped up and now they’re there.”<\/p>\n Jubilant scenes greeted the Swedish faithful following Gyokeres’ late goal and Fr\u00e4nd\u00e9n is seeing a different side to Viktor and the home faithful.<\/p>\n “Those goals changed him; his posture, everything, you know, he looks a lot more like a leader now.<\/p>\n “After getting Sweden through in the playoffs, he did his goal celebration with all the spectators behind, which takes a bit of courage to go up there and say, \u2018okay, all of you, let’s do this together and arrange for this photo.\u2019<\/p>\n “That was something we’ve never seen before in Sweden. I think maybe he hadn’t quite been at his very best for Sweden before, but this has changed him. We saw that at Arsenal too.”<\/p>\n Following qualification, Viktor returned to north London and scored five more times, helping us lift the Premier League and reach the Champions League final for only the second time in our history.<\/p>\n Now, it’s onto the World Cup, where Sweden will face the Netherlands, Japan and Tunisia in the newly expanded finals. <\/p>\n So what of the chances of a Swedish success in the States? A lot of that may fall on the shoulders of our top scorer from last season, according to the Swedish journalist.<\/p>\n “I think we have to be very humble, it’s a tough group. From where we were to where we are now, it’s not easy.<\/p>\n “A lot, a lot depends on Gyokeres. Lots of people will hope for him to get a couple of goals that could get us through the group. He will be the main focus now. He is one of the main Swedish players who has had a good season for their domestic side and Potter trusts him to make a big impact.”<\/p>\n \n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Goals win you games – but there was something bigger about Viktor Gyokeres’ last-gasp strike against Poland in the FIFA World Cup playoffs; it meant more. Our number 14 lashed home from close range in the dying moments in Stockholm to send his homeland to a first World Cup in eight years. That goal, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportings.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} When will our stars be in World Cup action? <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n