Swedes Draws Match With Wasteful Russians

Toivonen’s goal got a gutsy Swedish national football team battle back coming up with a 1-1 tie with Russians – yet the Russian team manager commented on a possible winning fate for the visitors.

The match was hosted at Stockholm Friends Arena.

The Russian football squad took lead in tenth minute of the match when Kokorin (Alexsandr) surged through prior to cutting back on right foot & rolling ball through Antonsson (Mikael) & past a desperate dive of Isaksson (Andreas).

The Swedes practically wasted the best chance to equalize3 minutes later when Durmaz (Jimmy) upended in box by Smolnikov (Igor) – however, goalie Akinfeev (Igor) threw himself into his right, pushing away Larsson’s (Sebastian) well-struck penalty.

In for injured Ibrahimovic (Zlatan), Toivonen pulled the Swedes level in 49th minute of the match, turning home Jimmy’s low cross prior to being replaced with Elmander (Johan) 8 minutes later post a hamstring injury.

With 4 points from first couple of game, the Russians are leading C Group on the goal differences from Austria and Montenegro- with the Sweden squad in 4th place on 2 points. Next Russia would be hosting Moldova & the Swedish would be greeting Liechtenstein.

“I am glad with my team’s performance but not at all happy with the result”, stated Russian coach Fabio Capello, who is known to be hard task master. We had enormous opportunities to score our winning goal. There’re couple of saves from keeper, a mistake from the forward & some moments which were actually quite dangerous for the Swedes.”

Erik Harmen (Sweden coach) appeared quite content with the team fate in the Russian match, in spite dropping couple of points.

“I am really glad with our very attitude”, stressed the Swedish coach. “We started our game well & we played all good till their goal. It was akin to a big blow into your stomach when the Russians were 1-0 up.”