Zlatan Ibrahimovic may not have been in Russia along with his Swedish teammates who created history but from far away, he made sure his wishes reached them.
Ahead of the World Cup 2018, Ibrahimovic had said that Sweden can win the World Cup and even as they could not deliver as per his words, they did perform above the expectations.
Sweden’s journey to the World Cup was not at all easy, they qualified for the tournament by beating Italy in a play-off but they showed steel and belief to reach their first quarter-final in 24 years.
Without Ibrahimovic up front, different Swedish players stepped up at different times to steer the country forward.
On Saturday, they just fell to a much more compact and more than that an inspired an English side.
They had their chances but Jordan Pickford put up the performance of a lifetime to stop Sweden from scoring. They created chances after chances, even towards the end of the match but Pickford would just not let them through.
Even though they were unable to score past England, that did not diminish the heights they touched in Russia and Ibrahimovic made sure people would remember that.
Ibrahimovic took to Twitter to praise the Swedish performance and thanked them all “for the show”.