Sweden-England Analysis

The meeting in the Quarter-Finals served with two nations that are so good at set-pieces' that ultimately this will become the crucial factor heading to the Semi-Finals.
  SSweden is the team that followed tactical trends from 2015 in football, which lead them out of the group stage past Germany and Mexico out of the group stage, and to beating Switzerland without problems in last 16.
  1. Their style of play relies on strong and compact defensive organization, but the type of defending is selective depending on the opponent.
      They showed that they can press high as well as defend deep, so England might have difficulties to create platforms for penetration. Against Mexico they showed issues when defending against dynamic positioning in between horizontal and vertical lines, that occupies attention of more then one defender, which influences decision making on who and when to close down or mark.
  2. Maybe the key strength of England in this match will be, apart from set-pieces, the ability to get in behind defensive line. Against 4-4-2 structure and compact defenses, advanced midfielders moved out of position to create space for Sterling to drop deep and receive the ball in between the lines.
If Sterling is followed by centre-backs, advanced midfielders made runs in behind to receive lob pass from deep. This could be applied on Granqvist in order to exploit his lack of pace.