Michael Cox

speaker

164 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 6 Jun

Michael Cox’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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The Athletic FC Podcast · The World Cup's most tactically interesting teams · 6 Jun 2026 podcast

think, oh, wow, Switzerland are playing.

We've got to tune in for that one.

But I do think they just always progress one round further than you expect Switzerland.

And I think there's a lot to be said for that.

I'm quite intrigued by Sweden just because they qualified in such an incredibly backdoor route to the tournament.

So just to clarify, they finished bottom of their qualification group.

They automatically got a place in the playoffs because over 12 months previously, they'd finished top of their Nations League group.

And that was Nations League C, so it wasn't the strongest competitors.

Because of that kind of slightly questionable performance, they were guaranteed to get an away draw in the first leg of the playoffs.

They got drawn against Ukraine, who obviously can't play at home at the moment.

So the game was on neutral territory in Spain.

And then a bit of a coin toss about which of the teams who won that would play at home in the final round of the qualifiers.

And Sweden came out that they had a home draw against Poland.

In Stockholm, rather than in Warsaw, they won that 3-2.

So I wrote an article saying this is probably the most undeserved World Cup qualification in history, which I'm sorry to say did blow up a little bit in Sweden.

And that was three months ago.

And even at his press conference last week, Graham Potter, who of course is now their manager, was asked what he thought of this idea that someone from the New York Times had said it was the most undeserved qualification ever.

And Graham Potter kind of said, well, fair enough.

So I'm intrigued how they do, because it could all come together.

I mean, they do actually have great, you know, some great attackers with Izak and Gyokure.

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