Jon Dahl Tomasson was sacked as head coach of the Swedish men's national football team in October 2025 due to poor performance in the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.
The decision was made after consecutive losses, including a 1-0 home defeat to Kosovo, which left Sweden at the bottom of their qualifying group.
Anders Christiansen has always paid tribute to Jon Dahl Tomasson. The Malmo FF midfielder first enjoyed having Tomasson as assistant coach in the Danish national team, and then the two enjoyed a close relationship when "JDT" coached Malmo FF for two seasons (2020–21) and made "AC" the team captain.
Today, Christiansen says that "the sacking of Tomasson shows how powerful the media is" in an interview with Aftonbladet.
"This was probably the best proof of how much power the media has. Even if he had stayed and Sweden had won the two games in November, the negativity would have remained. It was only a matter of time before it would become official. Then it became easier to sack him when they couldn't win against Kosovo at home."
"I´ll have to be a little careful what I answer. But the external pressure that was on him in the TV studios, in the media, in the conversations... they were constantly trying to find the negative angle and asked the players what they thought about everything."
"If he had won the matches, he wouldn't have been fired, but the media helped turn the Swedish people against him, as we saw after Kosovo. I won't say that it was 100 percent the media that got him fired, but I think it was an extremely big factor."
Graham Potter replaced Tomasson as the Swedish national team coach and began his campaign by losing to Switzerland and drawing with Slovenia. But Sweden still has a chance of reaching the World Cup through the playoffs in March.