When Jon Dahl Tomasson took office in 2024, he was Sweden's first foreign national team captain in football.
All the Dane's press conferences were in English, but when his replacement – the Englishman Graham Potter – met the media for the first time, he began in Swedish.
I stand here now as national team captain. It is a great great honor. It feels exciting. It feels incredible, he began in Swedish.
But sorry, now we must continue in English.
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Otherwise, your ears will start to bleed because of all the bad Swedish, he says in English.
After that, he continued to answer in English, but unlike Tomasson, Potter chose to answer questions asked in Swedish.
Refreshing that he began with a speech in Swedish and showed that he cares somewhere, it becomes down-to-earth. Unlike Jon Dahl Tomasson, he also took the questions in Swedish. I think that's a significant difference. Partly, the journalists become better, the questions become better, but it also shows that he is more receptive, says SVT's reporter Gabriel Melke, in SVT's broadcast, after the press conference.
Potter learned Swedish when he trained Östersund in 2011–2018.
