Ibrahimovic on target as Swedes edge Denmark

The Danes came out strong but Zlatan Ibrahimovic quelled the Danish supporters by putting the Swedes ahead after 20 minutes.

A backheel from Jimmy Durmaz allowed Mikael Lustig to sprint away down the right flank and his pass reached Forsberg at speed and the Leipzig winger buried a first-time shot into the corner past Schmeichel. Player now representing the Paris Saint-Germain could have scored the second goal, but he had a goal ruled out for offside as the Danes struggled to score a goal of their own.

Ibrahimovic made no mistake from the penalty spot, though, after Thomas Kahlenberg tripped Forsberg inside the area five minutes after the break.

“This is just fabulous”, said Ibrahimovic, who at age 34 is not expected to play internationally beyond Euro 2016 in France. With two goals against Denmark, he helped secure a 4-3 aggregate win – and the result might not be as good as the goals. I am very happy in PSG, I have my last six months and let us see what happens afterwards.

“For us it would have been better to start the tie away from home but we can not change anything as that was the draw”, Ukraine coach Mikhail Fomenko said.

We’re never content to lose, but we can be satisfied with 1-2. We chose to change things around and it gave us options in the second half.

And Denmark were again made to pay for their lack of cutting-edge a few moments later, Ibrahimovic giving Schmeichel no chance with a pin-point swerving free-kick from 25 yards out.

And the Swedes only need to look at their most recent play-off contests to know they can not exclusively rely on goals from their talisman, with Ibrahimovic’s brace in a play-off for the World Cup finals in 2014 counting for little when he was upstaged by Cristiano Ronaldo’s hat-trick.