Sweden facing defeat

I am not really sure what happened, to be honest. I was expecting the Swedish newspapers to rip Europe to shreds when Charlotte did as badly as she did, but they have been surprisingly calm and down-to-earth.

One flop was one thing, in Helsinki everyone was really unprepared for the Swedish debacle and reacted thereafter. In Belgrade, it seems some tiny hint of disbelief lived somewhere deep down the minds of the present journalists, and it seems most people are more constating the fact that Sweden no longer knows how to spellbind the European audience.

Famous (or infamous) TV-critic Anders Björkman of Expressen really nailed it today: when you look at how Sweden voted, you see we gave low or no points to the top four in the final ranking - we are not exactly mainstream in this contest anymore.

There is a certain amount of sadness attached to it, of course. When Pelé was no longer the best football player in the world, he was probably quite sad as well. Nobody seems to know where to go from here, but at least there is room for discussion what kind of song to enter in the future.

Most importantly, nobody is blaming Charlotte for the lack of success. They'd better not. She couldn't have done it better, and nobody else for that matter. "Hero" just wasn't what the world wanted, however difficult it is to digest that.