Arlington, Texas \u2013 Sweden coach Graham Potter has warned his team against having another poor defensive performance when it faces Japan in Arlington, Texas, on Thursday, \u200bas Sweden attempts to bounce back from its heavy loss to the \u200cNetherlands last \u200cSaturday to book a place in the World Cup last \u200b32.<\/p>\n
The Swedes followed up their opening 5-1 win over Tunisia with a loss by the same scoreline against the Dutch and sit in third in Group F, \u2060one point behind both the Netherlands and Japan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t defend in the way that we did, \u2060we have to improve that situation,\u201d Potter told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cJapan are strong on the wings, and they\u2019re strong through the middle as well, \u200bso we meet a very good \u2060team, and we have to make sure that we are better than we were in that respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Japanese are unbeaten \u2060in both matches \u200bhaving twice battled back from a goal down to \u200bearn a draw with the Netherlands before handing the Tunisians a 4-0 defeat that \u200beliminated \u200cthe African side.<\/p>\n
Daichi Kamada has scored in both matches for Hajime Moriyasu\u2019s side while Ayase Ueda put in a commanding performance against Tunisia, scoring twice and setting up a third to highlight the quality throughout the Japan \u200cteam.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever plays offers a threat, it\u2019s not about individuals with the Japanese team,\u201d Potter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think their biggest strength is collectively. You don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to play, you can\u2019t second-guess their position. They have a collective threat in attack, a collective defense \u200band \u200bthat\u2019s something we have to be very, very aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u200bSwedes carry a significant attacking threat of their own in the shape of Alexander \u2060Isak and Viktor Gyokeres.<\/p>\n
Gyokeres won the Premier League with Arsenal in his first season with the club while Isak struggled with injuries following his move to Liverpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it will be fear, I think it\u2019s respect,\u201d \u200bPotter said. \u201cRespect for what they\u2019ve achieved, in terms of one has won the Premier League and one has had a great career and a big move to a top team.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the season he has had has been disrupted by injury, Alex is still a top, top player.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arlington, Texas \u2013 Sweden coach Graham Potter has warned his team against having another poor defensive performance when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[20313,150,152,151,88699,120036,10696],"class_list":["post-350356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-2026-fifa-world-cup","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-graham-potter","tag-samurai-blue","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}