Graham Potter faces a challenging task.
His Sweden side, filled with riches from the Premier League, Bundesliga and La Liga, have to overturn its dismal form to try and reach the World Cup through a play-off game against Ukraine and then potentially Poland or Albania.
But Potter’s relationship with the Scandinavian country has been built on uphill battles.
His most daunting?
Performing a rendition of Swan Lake with his Ostersunds FK squad.
Former Ostersunds chairman, Daniel Kindberg, said: “It was extremely challenging because we had to move the performance for two weeks because we were heading for Europe.
“And it was exhausting because dancing is both mentally and physically challenging. But it went extremely well, and it is well-known.
“It was a decision-making training method, and it was embraced by everybody, maybe not the first time and second time, but slowly everybody understood that this is the path we're going. And so it was, in the end, quite popular.”
This was one of many performances that Potter and his former team would do as they wrote a fairytale of their own. Rising from the fourth division of Swedish football to the top division into European competition.
It made the Englishman become a beloved household name within the footballing landscape of the country.
The 58-year-old said: “The new methods he brought to the table, but also the football that we played, was a paradigm shift that we led in Swedish football.
“And he was, of course, the brain behind the tactics, the methods. And you can see people fall in love with the football that we played, and that made an impression on the whole of Sweden.
“It made an impact on people who had never been in football, but also on those in football who understood that this is something extremely special.
“He's the greatest friend you can have, and if you ask every player he has ever managed in Sweden, they have only good things to say about him.
“So he earned it by his hard work and his personality; he earned the respect that he's now having.”
But during Potter’s stay in northern Sweden, he embraced the culture of the country and embedded himself in the traditions, learning the language fluently.
Kindberg also quipped that Potter was at times, “more Swedish than himself.”
So even when he left the country to join Swansea, a move that ultimately led him to Brighton, then a couple of ill-fated spells at Chelsea and West Ham, the Swedish people still believed in his talents.
Kindberg said: “He handles the ups, and he handles the downs, and he, that is credit to his character. He always tries to learn whatever it is in life, moves on and see possibilities.
“And people talk about Chelsea and West Ham as kind of failures. If you want to see things as a failure in your life, you do that. Otherwise, you can treat them as things that you learn from, and if you look at everything around, I think he did remarkably well, because the football world is very different.
“One of the first things we did when we started working together was to exterminate all the blame culture. We forbade that, and that was forbidden from the boardroom down to the kids.
“We work with that very, very strongly, and that made us extremely strong. And I think that is something that may be missed in English football sometimes.
“I'm very, very proud of being his friend for his English career. But I'm even more proud when he was announced as the National Team Manager for Sweden.”
Potter had only left West Ham in September 2025 and by October, he had already been announced as Sweden’s new head coach, with his contract getting extended to 2030 in March 2026.
So despite the winless start, his influence and abilities are hugely respected by his new employees, just as much as they were by his older ones.
Kindberg said: “I think it was bold and I think it was brave (to take the Sweden job), and I think it was wise, because when Graham feels something strong inside himself, he has to do that. I'm very happy.
“So, for me, it wasn't a surprise, but it surprised a lot of people in Sweden, it did.
“He's actually liked and loved by a lot of people in Swedish football society. And that is because he earned every ounce of it, every success.
“He's extremely intelligent. He's a man manager and his caretaking of people has a tempo to it.
“He's tactically gifted, and he can adapt, but he never compromises with his with his core belief, and I think that has followed him from when he was young.”
For Potter, it is all about looking forward as he tries to manage a copious amount of talent, but his Swedish past has put him in the best position possible to get his adopted nation on side.
The cover image for this post was sourced from Wikimedia Commons under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licence
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham_Potter_at_%C3%96stersunds_FK_in_2017._%28cropped%29.jpg), and is attributed to the author,Martin Årseth. It was retrieved by me on the 26th March 2026.
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