Why we don't win football matches

I sat there on Jeff's couch eating a cheap pizza and drinking french cider and almost crying as the Swedish National team spent ninety minutes of disgrace against Albania and ended it with a 0-0 draw. I saw the same attitude that I saw throughout Euro 2008 and what I've seen more and more of lately with Swedish sports: fear. We are a better team than Albania, we have better players, and we have more routine. It didn't show up at all, in fact it looked more like Albania was going to score first for most of the match. I kept clenching my fist over and over as the midfielders lost the ball again and again, as Källström disappeared after five minutes, and as the players looked like amateurs chasing warriors around the field.

In Sweden the answer is very simple: we don't think we can win. Or if we do we deny it and talk down about it and tell ourselves that we shouldn't think that way. How dare a nation with our size sit and think that it can win a world cup. We've almost done it before, so why not again? I know we don't have the Pele's, the Ronaldo's, and the Maradona's of the world, but honestly that isn't what wins a world cup. The attitude wins world cups. I would prefer if the swedish players would talk to in the interviews about how they know they can win, that they believe in themselves, that small nations can do big things. Look at the Olympics, we whined the whole way through when we should have been trying harder and believing. We don't need apologies and I admit I don't like the Hubris that most are capable of, but I would like to see an attitude that says, hey we are small and we can win, and even if we don't we'll fight like hell for it!