Germany takes on Sweden on Saturday, June 23rd in Sochi, Russia at 2pm Eastern time. Favored to win by a large margin, the odds are in Germany's. The defending World Cup champions are far more experienced and more talented than the Swedes, who are trying to forge an identity after the departure of their most celebrated player in history, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who retired from international play last year. These two teams have played a total of 36 times already, with Germany holding a 15-8-13 record. The most recent game was in 2013, in a qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup. Germany won that contest 5-3.
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Germany
Coming into this tournament as defending champions, Germany is in a position to tie Brazil for the most World Cups for a single nation with 5. With another World Cup championship, they can realistically lay claim to being the best soccer nation on the planet along with the Brazilians. This game against Sweden should be a speedbump on their way to that goal. The Germans are on a roll, too, having stormed through qualifying with a 10-0 record while compiling a +39 goal differential. They have however gone 0-3-1 in their last four friendly matches however, but that is likely due to Manager Joachim Low testing out different players and formations before the start of the World Cup.
Sweden
Sweden may not be coming in as hot as Germany, or with as much pomp, but they have put together an impressive record over the last couple years as a team that beat odds and upset more talented teams. In the Euro 2016 Cup, they finished last in their group and the team rebounded by going 10-2-6 beating Portugal, France and Italy and drubbing Luxembourg 8-0. They also effectively eliminated Italy from World Cup Qualification in the second round, 2-game play-off, where they beat the Italians by an aggregate of 1-0. The real big news for the Swedes though is that their most famous player will not be part of their World Cup team. After a long period of uncertainty, Zlatan Ibrahimovic announced that he would not come out of retirement to be part of Sweden's 2018 World Cup run.
Match Overview
This game will most likely be a walk for the Germans. If they show up ready and running on all cylinders, than Sweden does not have much of a chance. Germany is incredibly deep too, so even if a poor performance or an injury to their top player causes someone to come out of the starting lineup, they can easily be replaced by someone on the bench. To give an example of just how deep this German team is, they won the 2017 confederations cup without Jérôme Boateng, Mats Hummels, Manuel Neuer, Toni Kroos, Mesut Özil, Thomas Müller, Mario Götze, Ilkay Gündogan, Marco Reus, Sami Khedira and Leroy Sané. Sweden meanwhile does not have as many standouts, and will be depending more on tight team play. After Emil Forsberg, Andreas Granqvist and Viktor Claesson are the main standouts, playing in the Russian League.
