The 1994 World Cup bronze medal is ever-present in Swedish national football. Now that a World Cup is being held again in the USA, the parallels are inevitable.
"There's a generation that still lives with it today. And it's an inspiration for us to do something similar. So I'm really excited to experience something similar to what they did," says Gabriel Gudmundsson.
The 27-year-old wasn't even born when Sweden won bronze in 1994 (though his father Niklas made senior international appearances around that time), and that applies to virtually the entire Swedish World Cup squad.
The memory of Ravelli
Kristoffer Nordfeldt (born 1989) is the only one who can have any actual memories from the championship, although Ken Sema (1993) was also born before the 1994 World Cup. For Nordfeldt, it is above all the dramatic penalty kick in the quarter-final against Romania that has stuck with him, especially Thomas Ravelli's decisive save.
As a goalkeeper, I have a connection to Ravelli and that penalty save. It is the biggest success, apart from 1958 (World Cup silver), that we have had as a national team. And the only thing that is in the relatively recent past, even if it wasn't yesterday. So it's quite natural that there will be some kind of "benchmark" that you are compared to, says Kristoffer Nordfeldt.
Just born.
Victor Nilsson Lindelöf missed that quarter-final by a week. Sweden's current captain was born in the middle of the World Cup final between Brazil and Italy.
I was born during the penalties there. So it's clear that it's a little extra special and cool for me to come to the USA and experience a championship as a player. It will be my last World Cup and it feels like the circle is closing a little, says Nilsson Lindelöf.
He has, of course, heard stories about what that summer was like, when the Swedish men's national team created football fever in Sweden and was welcomed at Rålambshovsparken in Stockholm, where tens of thousands of fans gathered to celebrate the bronze.
Nilsson Lindelöf hopes to be part of something similar in the coming weeks.
You've seen documentaries and things like that, and I've heard stories from my parents and others about what it was like in Sweden and the joy that surrounded it.
