CELTIC ace Stefan Johansen insists he would love to have a Euro 2016 play-off Scandinavian showdown with Sweden after his Norway side suffered late heartache.
The Norwegians needed to win in Rome to clinch qualification for the Finals and were leading 1-0 until Italy grabbed two late goals to send them into the play-offs.
And Hoops midfielder Johansen would love to see them face Sweden, who have Celtic team mate Mikael Lustig in their squad.
Johansen said: "I definitely want to play Sweden. They are a good opponent, but they would suit us well.
"We played them in a friendly in June and although the game ended 0-0, we were the better side.
"Put it this way, they are certainly not better than Italy and we came very close to beating them.
"There is a love-hate relationship between the countries and it would be great to play them.
"The Swedish players have been telling everyone that they want to play us. Would we be scared of Zlatan Ibrahimovic? No.
"Well, I can tell them that we'd happily play them too.
"We have to be positive and believe we can go to the Euros."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel