Zuperman and Kryptonite

On Monday Sweden will announce its squad for the friendly against Croatia.  The last squad before the Euro 2012 squad.  Super-John Guidetti has recently completed back-to-back hat tricks for Feynoord against Twente and rivals Ajax and his tally is now 14 goals in 14 games, and quite a few assists on top of that.  19 year-old Guidetti's success reawakens the main discussion point around the Swedish national team over the last year: why is Sweden better without Zlatan? Should Zlatan even play as we seem to be doing better without him?

Let me state my piece.

Stats are pretty clear; Sweden performs better when Zlatan is not playing.  This has split the debate in two factions.  Faction one (at least in my mind primarily represented by those who usually represent small-town narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness in general) want to sack Zlatan from the team.  Faction 2 says Zlatan is our best player so he should play regardless of anything.

Why don't we, Moneyball-style, have a careful look at those stats? First, which stats are relevant?

What has been the apparent problem with Sweden with Zlatan on the pitch? In random order, he has (i) looked pretty disgusted by the random runs and passes by certain teammates and expressed that disgust in sometimes harsh language, (ii) looked uninspired and out of sync in the pressing game after losing possession and (iii) shot a truckload of freekicks in the ban wall.  Why is this and how do we correct it? The latter is maybe the easiest.  With Sebastian Larsson, Kim Källström, Andersson Svensson and Rasmus Elm on the team Zlatan better bend it like he did against Cagliari or not take them at all.

The first two are a bit trickier and here is where we should look more carefully at the stats.  Sweden under Erik Hamrén play what he refers to as 4-2-3-1 but what in my world is a pretty classic 4-4-2 where one striker is supposed to fall a bit deeper (the number 10) and one be more of a fox-in-the-box (the number 9).  Zlatan has declared that he should be the number 9 although he is by quite some distance our best passing player.  Hamrén has so far met this request.

I have tried to make sense out of the 21 games Sweden have played under Hamrén (excluding the January caps), looking at Sweden's performance (grading 1-5), whether Zlatan played, who else played up front, whether we played home or away, whether it was a qualifyer or a friendly and of course the result.

From a first glance, this comes out:

• Sweden's average performance (according to me) is 3.10.
• Sweden's performance with Zlatan is indeed worse, 2.83 versus 3.44 without him
• But Sweden is also worse with Elmander playing (3.0 irrespective if we take into account the games he played as a winger or not)
• Looking at individuals, Sweden is at its best with Toivonen playing (3.42 and then I am still not counting him as playing in the Finland game where Zlatan substituted him due to an early injury)

Looking a bit more on the game of games we played:

• There is a huge difference between home games and away games.  Sweden have been great at home (7 wins, 1 draw against Germany, no defeats, a goal difference of 24-5 and av average performance  at 4.0).  This is to compare with the away games where we have won seven and lost five (and drawn that neutral game against Ukraine in Cyprus).  The average performance is at 2.5

What about that Zlatan then?

• He started of pretty well. He had a good 2010 apart from the game against Holland when the entire Swedish team was unbalanced, and continued well in 2011 and peaked this spring against Finland.  At that point, Sweden with Zlatan had an average performance of 3.43.  It is really in the last five games that Sweden in general and Zlatan in particular have been lame.
• So Sweden has been lame in five out of the last six and brilliant in the sixth (against Holland) and the Holland game was the only one where Zlatan did not play.  Zlatan's fault then? Could be, but remember what I said about home games versus away games above.  Holland we played at home, the other games were away games.  And the combination of Zlatan on the pitch and playing away has been awful.  At home, when half the crowd is cheering more for Zlatan than for Sweden, Zlatan has not been bad at all.  That points to motivation (or lack thereof, rather) being Zlatan's kryptonite
• But what about Zlatan's buddy up front? Zlatan has played seven games with Elmander as his up-front partner.  The average is not very good, 2.57 with the best performance being Zlatan's solo show against Finland.  The only really good connect between the two we saw for a second in Cyprus against Ukraine, resulting in a great goal
• In the other five games, Zlatan has played with Toivonen.  The two have performed above average together, at 3.2.  Apart from the horrid performance against Holland, Sweden has also been pretty effective with the pair up front (goal difference of 15-0 but 11 of those scored against San Marino)
• But.  In four of those five games, Elmander has still started, as a winger.  Zlatan has thus only played one game under Hamrén without Elmander, at home in the comfortable 6-0 win against San Marino.

So what are the conclusions here?

• Sweden performs better without Zlatan when playing away
• Zlatan and Sweden performs better when Zlatan plays with Toivonen than when he plays with Elmander
• No other Zlatan options have been tested, and Zlatan has almost never played without Elmander on the pitch.

If Superman would always have had kryptonite in his pockets he probably would never have disovered his super powers.  Lack of motivation may be one thing, but I believe it makes sense for Hamrén to test Zlatan without Elmander before the Euro 2012.  For the friendly against Croatia I would like to see Hamrén start with Zlatan as number 10 and Guidetti as number 9, ask them to do 45 minutes but 45 intense minutes, with aggressive high pressure on the Croatian defense, and then let Toivonen/Elmander do the same in the second half.   That's my piece.