‘Someone scratched me, or bit me’: Graham Potter reacts to bizarre injury in Sweden’s World Cup celebrations

Sweden boss Graham Potter was delighted as his side opened their World Cup campaign with a 5-1 thrashing of Tunisia at the Estadio Monterrey on Sunday night.

>They appeared a world away from their dismal qualifying performances with an assured win over error-strewn Tunisia, with Brighton midfielder Yasin Ayari bookending the scoring, Mattias Svanberg finding the net and the star pairing of Alexander Isak and Viktor Gyokeres also on the scoresheet.

>Potter was jubilant afterwards but also appeared to have picked up an injury over the course of the match, as he was pictured bleeding from his right ear.

>“I don’t know what happened. Someone scratched me, or bit me. I’ll have to analyse the video footage,” he joked, via Swedish publication Sportbladet.

>Sweden still have to face Japan and the Netherlands in a difficult Group F, with the two sides playing out a 2-2 draw on Sunday.

>But the performance in Monterrey resurrected Swedish hopes after a dire qualifying campaign in which they failed to win a game in their group, with Potter brought in late to turn their fortunes around.

>They eventually qualified via a Nations League play-off, beating Ukraine and Poland to make this summer’s finals across the US, Canada and Mexico.

>Potter said: “I’m really pleased with the ‌players. We know the quality of the individuals in the front positions but they needed a team to function.

>“We weren’t perfect, we knew we wouldn’t be. But at the start of the game I thought we had good control.

>“We just focus on what we can do, we focus on our performances. It doesn’t matter what people think from the outside or opinions.

>“That’s the beauty of the World Cup, everyone has predictions and forecasts but we have to focus on our job and how we play as a team.

>“We will meet another top team at the weekend [the Netherlands, who they play on 20 June] who are one of the favourites for the competition.”