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It was certainly in the hair, but once the match started, Albin Lagergren had the green light to participate against the Russian Handball Federation team and thus make his first match at the World Handball Championship.
And it did not become the last. Sweden outscored their Russian opponent with a landslide 34-20 and are in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.
– It felt relatively good. A bit of timing that wasn’t there, but overall I was very happy with the game and the effort of the entire team, Lagergren says.
The 28-year-old from Varberg he had not played a match since mid-December for his club’s Rhein-Neckar Löwen. Since then, most have faced Lagergren, who struggled to recover from a foot injury and was unable to make it to the World Cup when he tested positive for covid-19 the week before leaving for Egypt.
However, he had little hope of being able to join at a later stage.
– I did my second test on Tuesday and when it tested positive, I felt a bit run down. But then I thought I would test for the last time on Thursday and luckily it was negative.
As recently as Saturday, Lagergren took the first best flight to Cairo, a journey that was not entirely straightforward.
– I was on my way to Landvetter when I found out I was going to go, so I started going before everything was ready. Then it became a hassle when I was checking in, so I checked in a room before the plane left. There were some quick jerks there, he says.
Then the journey began with Lagergren again testing negative and being able to join training in the middle of the day, but after that the Egyptian Ministry of Health stepped in and requested another test, the fourth in a row in total.
– They needed another pcr test, I found out when I came back from training at 12. So it was just a matter of waiting for that answer to arrive on time or not.
A nervous few hours got the message that Albin Lagergren had been waiting, and at the last moment he was finally ready to play.
The idea was that he could come in and feel a bit about the game and have sporadic playtime. But a pair of expulsions from Lukas Sandell, who started for Sweden as a right-back, allowed Lagergren to enter at an early stage and he played a total of 29 minutes.
– There is a lot to the spinal cord, the movements on the field, and then it is so heavenly easy to play with these players. You don’t have to do much, you just have to get to where you want to go and catch the ball, he says and continues:
– I have not been tired for five years, my body feels very good.
Lagergren’s efforts were impressive about teammates in Sweden.
– He is a fantastic and fantastically wise handball player. You can see that here too. He has sat at home a lot and trained a little at home, but he shows that he is a fantastically good handball player with fantastic talent. He raised our team today, says game dealer Jim Gottfridsson.
Since Linus Persson left a big gap in the same position, due to a concussion against Slovenia, the arrival of Lagergren was necessary, says Lucas Pellas.
– Of course it was important. Albin is one of the best in the world at his position, so it’s clear he didn’t have the best load either, but we pump and give each other confidence all the time, says the six on the left.
For Sweden, the last group match was the team’s sixth in the tournament with four wins and two crosses as a result. But for Lagergren, the World Cup has only just begun.
– It will be very fun. These are the most fun games, when you win or lose. Of course you want to be there then, he says.
Sweden plays the quarterfinals on Wednesday. The opposition is Argentina, Croatia or Qatar, something to be decided when Group 2 is played on Monday night.
Read more:
The team that Sweden can face in the quarter-finals: “He would like to avoid Croatia”
Sweden ready for the quarter-finals: beat the Russians in the handball World Cup
Denmark to the quarterfinals of the World Cup
