Monday 30 May 2016 14:41, UK
Martin O'Neill is already drawing up his plan to try to prevent Zlatan Ibrahimovic from wrecking the Republic of Ireland's Euro 2016 finals campaign.
The Republic still have one warm-up match to play, Tuesday night's friendly against Belarus in Cork, before they head for France and their opening Group E fixture against Sweden at the Stade de France on June 13.
Four years ago in Poland, Ireland were beaten 3-1 by Croatia in their first game and O'Neill admits Ibrahimovic - who is on the lookout for a new club after leaving Paris Saint Germain - has the potential to take them apart if they are not prepared.
He said: "He's a very good player. Great players find ways of extricating themselves from situations if they are being tightly-marked, and Ibrahimovic comes into that category.
"He has been a very fine player for a long time, he has faced those sort of situations before in his time. We need to be very careful - and I'm hoping that Sweden will be careful with one or two of our players.
"We will have to play very, very strongly in the match. It's a big game for us. Ibrahimovic is a terrific footballer and there's no question about it, a talisman of Sweden.
"But they have got some other very fine players playing as well, so it's a tough game for us, we know that. But we want to make it as tough as possible for them.
"You would want to think that somebody with a little bit of talent might go past a couple of players and stick the ball in the net. Sweden have got a very good player who can do that and one I think the Swedish team will probably look to.
"We have got a number of very fine players in our team who on the day, will have to be really ready for the match, otherwise we might struggle.
"But overall, naturally we are looking forward to it, just in the same way Sweden are probably looking forward to playing us."
With Belgium and Italy awaiting the pair after their opening skirmish, both O'Neill and Sweden counterpart Erik Hamren knows defeat in the first game could prove fatal to their hopes of making it past the first stage of the tournament.
O'Neill said: "I was speaking to him (Hamren) not so long ago and I think that if we were realistic about this, he would probably be targeting the game against us as one that he thinks he can win, and we are going in with exactly the same approach.
"We feel as if it's a very important game, not only because it's the first match, but because maybe we are the lower-ranked teams and it would be nice to get off to a decent start."
