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6/5/2026» 0
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# [Graham Potter: ‘I feel very Swedish when I’m working – I look a bit Swedish’](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/05/graham-potter-sweden-head-coach-world-cup-2026)

If management has taught Graham Potter anything it is that there is no point in trying to run away from failure. “You’ve got to face the bad stuff,” the 51-year‑old says as he thinks about how he recovered from bruising spells at Chelsea and West Ham. “The more you face it, the more chance your life is better. Then you get these beautiful moments.”

Potter is in reflective, occasionally punchy mood during a long conversation about a rollercoaster few years and the brutal life of a football manager. He points out there have also been some successes – he has, after all, lifted Sweden out of the doldrums and led them into the World Cup – but knows people tend to focus on the lows. Potter lasted seven months at Chelsea after leaving the stability of Brighton in September 2022. Then, after a long spell out, he was tempted back when West Ham came calling at the start of last year.

It was the wrong choice for Potter, who was lost in West Ham’s dysfunction. He won six of his 25 games, made a terrible start to his first full season and found himself at a crossroads after losing his job last September. What next? A career that promised so much was in danger of drifting into irrelevance.

“I have had enough life experience to be able to put all these things into perspective,” he says. “I’m grateful for all the experiences I have had, pluses and minuses. In the end, you have to deal with what life throws at you. After West Ham, I could have done two things. I could have sat around and done media. Or you can go and work.”

The approach from Sweden was on the way. They were in dire straits in their World Cup qualifying group and needed a replacement for the Dane Jon Dahl Tomasson. First, though, Potter had to look at himself. He spoke to people around him and discussed how to leave West Ham in the past.

“You have to deal with the failure,” Potter says. “But I think you become a better person for it. And then sometimes in football you just can’t rationalise it. You just go: ‘Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.’ Then you try to move on with your life.

The learnings you take from these experiences, they’re painful. I won’t share my learnings with you because it’s hurt me to get them. I think it should because that’s how you improve.”

Potter blocks out the outside noise. “If I worry about what people think about me that’s a miserable life,” he says. Equally, Potter understood what was at stake when he agreed to become Sweden’s manager on a short-term deal in October. He could not get them out of their qualifying group but they were handed a second chance thanks to their Nations League performances earning a spot in the playoffs. Failing again would have put another dent in his reputation.

Everything changed when Sweden got to work in March. They were cool and composed during the playoffs. Viktor Gyökeres scored a hat-trick in the 3-1 semi‑final win against Ukraine and an 88th-minute winner in the 3-2 victory over Poland in the decider in Stockholm.

“You go on to YouTube and go into the Swedish commentary of the game; I looked at it a couple of months afterwards and it’s the emotion in the voice,” Potter says. “Viktor scores and it’s like an out-of-body experience. All our subs are just running on the pitch. There’s 15 players on the pitch and I’m thinking: ‘That’s yellow cards, that’s problems.’ But it’s a World Cup, so all the rules are out the door.”

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