Gustav Svensson seems to enjoy eccentricities of life in MLS

The Guardian took on the rather Herculean effort to profile every single player from every single World Cup team, and of course that means looking in on our own Gustav Svensson (Sweden) and Roman Torres (Panama).

Svensson’s quote about soccer in the US is particularly fun - the rutabaga (a swede joke!), it seems, enjoys the ostentatious displays put on before the matches. “There’s fire, there are fireworks, big American flags and the anthem live before every game. I think that’s cool, it helps the motivation before the game.” If the Sounders are looking for ways to convince him to stay past this year, an easy solution seems to have just presented itself - more flames and booms.

Perhaps haunted by the ghosts of Cristian Roldan’s pizzas past, he also admits things are sometimes a bit... off. “...things are a bit strange sometimes. We have a forward who is sponsored by a pizza chain and every time he scores he runs off the pitch to have a bite from a pizza slice.” This might be in reference to Dominic Oduro, late of pizza hair, or maybe the lack of scoring has hidden a new Sounders sponsor.

Also of note is the reminder that Torres had said he’d cut his dreadlocks if Panama made the World Cup, but he’s so far held off because his daughter likes them too much.

There are a lot of fun facts in there all around the place, and we’d encourage you to peruse the whole thing.

(h/t to Steve_B for the find)