STOCKHOLM (AP) \u2014 Veteran Sweden goalkeeper Robin Olsen announced his retirement from international soccer after being told by coach Jon Dahl Tomasson he was no longer going to be the first-choice pick.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old Olsen made a big mistake leading to a goal for Slovenia in Sweden\u2019s 2-2 draw in Ljubljana last month in World Cup qualifying.<\/p>\n
Olsen started the 2-0 loss to Kosovo four days later, for his 79th appearance for Sweden, but the Swedish soccer federation announced Tuesday that he was ending his international career with immediate effect.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published Wednesday, Olsen \u2014 who now plays for Malm\u00f6 after leaving Aston Villa over the summer \u2014 said his decision to retire from international duty will stand while Tomasson continues to be coach because he is \u201ca leader that I didn\u2019t want to work under.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olsen said in the interview Tomasson told him last month he was Sweden\u2019s No. 1 goalkeeper but that he has since been informed by the coach it was no longer the case.<\/p>\n
Tomasson was scheduled to announce on Wednesday his squad for upcoming World Cup qualifiers against Switzerland and Kosovo, with Viktor Johansson potentially taking over as first-choice goalkeeper.<\/p>\n
Olsen, who played for Sweden for 10 years, said in a statement issued by the federation that it was a \u201cgreat honor to represent my country and I have always felt great support from our supporters.\u201d<\/p>\n
National team manager Stefan Pettersson said it was \u201csad\u201d that Olsen has chosen to retire and that he \u201cmeant a huge amount\u201d to the Sweden team.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STOCKHOLM (AP) \u2014 Veteran Sweden goalkeeper Robin Olsen announced his retirement from international soccer after being told by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-182498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}