Football World Cup 1978 / Sweden

This article covers the Swedish national football team at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina .

qualification

The Swedish team was drawn into Group 6 of the European qualification together with Norway and Switzerland .

On June 16, 1976, the Swedish team got off to a good start in the qualification when they scored a 2-0 win against their Scandinavian neighbors in Stockholm through goals from Andersson and Thomas Sjöberg . On October 9th of the year, the second victory came in the second qualifying game. In Basel, goals from Sjöberg and Bo Börjesson defeated Switzerland 2-1 when Serge Trinchero conceded . After the Swiss selection was defeated again 2-1 in the second leg on June 8, 1977 by two hits from Sjöberg and Börjesson and the goal conceded by Peter Risi , the team looked almost like the group winners. A tie on September 7th would have been enough to qualify for the finals, but Norway managed a 2-1 win against the Swedish selection with goals from Ottensen and Odd Iversen , Sjöberg's interim equalization was not enough. The Swedish national team had to tremble until October 30th, before Switzerland defeated the neighboring country 1-0 with a goal from Claudio Sulser and Sweden paved the way to Argentina.

rank	country	Gates	Points
1	Sweden	7: 4	6: 2
2	Norway	3: 4	4: 4
3	Switzerland	3: 5	2: 6

date	encounter	Result
June 16, 1976	Sweden - Norway	2: 0 (1: 0)
October 9, 1976	Switzerland - Sweden	1: 2 (1: 1)
June 8, 1977	Sweden - Switzerland	2: 1 (0: 0)
7th September 1977	Norway - Sweden	2: 1 (0: 0)

Swedish contingent

No.	Surname	Club before the start of the World Cup	birthday	Games	Gates
goalkeeper
1	Ronnie Hellström	1. FC Kaiserslautern	02/21/1949	3	0	0	0
12	Göran Hagberg	Östers IF	11/08/1947	0	0	0	0
17th	Jan Möller	Malmö FF	09/17/1953	0	0	0	0
Defender
2	Hans Borg	Eintracht Braunschweig	08/04/1953	3	0	1	0
3	Roy Andersson	Malmö FF	08/02/1949	3	0	0	0
4th	Björn Nordqvist	IFK Gothenburg	10/06/1942	3	0	0	0
5	Ingemar Erlandsson	Malmö FF	11/16/1957	3	0	0	0
13	Magnus Andersson	Malmö FF	04/23/1958	0	0	0	0
14th	Ronald Åhman	Örebro SK	01/30/1957	0	0	0	0
19th	Kent Karlsson	IFK Eskilstuna	11/25/1945	0	0	0	0
20th	Roland Andersson	Malmö FF	March 28, 1950	0	0	0	0
midfield player
6th	Staffan Tapper	Malmö FF	07/10/1948	2	0	0	0
7th	Linderoth is different	Olympique Marseille	03/21/1950	3	0	0	0
8th	Bo Larsson	Malmö FF	05/05/1944	3	0	0	0
9	Lennart Larsson	FC Schalke 04	07/09/1953	3	0	0	0
10	Thomas Sjöberg	Malmö FF	07/06/1952	3	1	0	0
18th	Olle Nordin	IFK Gothenburg	11/23/1949	1	0	0	0
striker
11	Benny Wendt	1. FC Kaiserslautern	04/11/1950	3	0	0	0
15th	Torbjörn Nilsson	IFK Gothenburg	07/09/1954	1	0	0	0
16	Conny Torstensson	FC Zurich	08/28/1949	1	0	0	0
21st	Sanny Åslund	AIK Solna	08/29/1952	0	0	0	0
22nd	Ralf Edström	IFK Gothenburg	07.10.1952	3	0	0	0
Trainer
	Georg Ericson		December 18, 1919

World Championship finals

The Swedish national team was drawn into preliminary group 3 , where they met Brazil , Austria and Spain .

rank	country	Gates	Points
1	Austria	3: 2	4: 2
2	Brazil	2: 1	4: 2
3	Spain	2: 2	3: 3
4th	Sweden	1: 3	1: 5

June 3, 1978 at the Estadio José María Minella in Mar del Plata
Brazil	-	Sweden	1: 1
June 7, 1978 at the Estadio José María Minella in Mar del Plata
Austria	-	Sweden	1-0
June 10, 1970 at the Estadio José María Minella in Mar del Plata
Spain	-	Sweden	1-0

On June 3, Sweden met the favored Brazilians in the first group game in front of 38,000 spectators. However, these could not convince and, after Sjöberg had shot his colors in the lead, could only compensate with Reinaldo . In the end, the tie remained and a protest by the Brazilians against the referee Thomas from Wales, who whistled unilaterally, was rejected.

Four days later, the second group game played against the Austrian selection, which surprisingly beat Spain 2-1 in their opening game. With a penalty converted by Hans Krankl , the team from the Alpine republic was able to prevail 1-0. This reduced the chances of advancing to zero, because if they won their own against the Spanish national team, the Austrians would need a simultaneous success against Brazil.

On June 10, Juan Manuel Asensi scored the only goal in the game for the teams from Sweden and Spain without a win to date. So it was clear that the Scandinavians had to start the early departure as bottom of the table. Since Brazil beat the surprise team from Austria with a difficult 1-0 win, the victory of the Iberians in the last game was worthless and they also left the tournament prematurely.

It took Sweden twelve years for Sweden to qualify for another major tournament - the 1990 World Cup .