France reaches Euro 2012 quarters despite 2-0 loss

KIEV, Ukraine — France was given a rude wake-up call by Sweden on Tuesday as it was beaten 2-0 in their final group game and had to rely on England to reach the quarterfinals of the European Championship.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored one of the best goals of the tournament with an acrobatic volley in the 54th minute and Sebastian Larsson added an injury-time goal to give already eliminated Sweden its first points of the tournament.

"We really wanted to win this game for the fans, their support has been fantastic," Ibrahimovic said. "We wanted to finish this strongly for them."

France, meanwhile, limps into the knockout round with big problems to solve in both defense and attack. Sweden exposed the frailties of its back four and was able to neutralize the dual threat of Karim Benzema and Franck Ribery.

The margin of victory could have been bigger as France was outplayed for much of the game despite only needing a draw to guarantee a spot in the next round and facing a team with nothing to play for but pride.

The loss ended France's 23-game unbeaten streak but it still finished second in Group D after England beat Ukraine 1-0 in Donetsk. France will face Spain in the quarterfinals but will need a much better performance to give the defending champions much of a challenge.

"You have to be optimistic to think that we can beat Spain, but it's hard right now to imagine that we can. We have to do better on Saturday," Blanc said. "We wanted to finish top of the group but couldn't manage it, so we have to deal with that."

England finished with seven points, while France had four and Ukraine and Sweden bowed out with three each.

France looked lackluster throughout much of the game and lacked clinical finishing when it did threaten the Swedish goal.

Substitute Jeremy Menez had France's best chance to equalize when he broke into the area in the 81st minute but his low shot was stopped by goalkeeper Andreas Isaksson's leg. From the resulting corner, Olivier Giroud headed just wide.

Benzema was largely ineffective again and remained scoreless at the tournament. Ribery had France's best chance in the first half when the ball fell to him on the left edge of the area but his shot was parried by Isaksson.

Instead, it was Ibrahimovic who stole the show with another spectacular goal to add to his resume. The tall AC Milan striker met Sebastian Larsson's cross from the left and put himself nearly sideways in the air before striking the ball perfectly past a helpless Hugo Lloris in the France goal.

"It was a perfect cross from Seb," Ibrahimovic said. "The whole team played a fantastic game today."

Lloris then single-handedly kept France in the game over the next few minutes as Sweden kept pressing, making point-blank saves to deny Christian Wilhelmsson and Olof Mellberg.

Larsson finally added the second by emphatically volleying a rebound into an empty net and finally giving the large contingent of Swedish fans a reason to celebrate.

"It's mixed emotions right now," Sweden coach Erik Hamren said. "We should be happy with the victory and the performance. ... But at the same time there's a sense of sadness in us all because we would have wanted to stick around a bit longer."

For France, though, it's back to the drawing board after a performance that would not go far against a team like Spain.