While the rest of the world were enjoying the rebirth of Andriy Shevchenko, Sweden were left to pick up the pieces of a hugely demoralising defeat.
The 2-1 defeat against the co-hosts Ukraine was met by a mixture of disappointment, emptiness and anger in Sweden. A lot of people were angry: the fans were angry, the newspaper columnists were angry and the players were angry. But the angriest man of them all? Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
At half-time, with the score 0-0, he had already had a heated discussion with Markus Rosenberg, Sweden's lone striker on the night. He then clashed with Marcus Allback, the player manager, apparently furious that some of the players had gone up to their wives and girlfriends after the game rather than to warm down. In the end he sent the physiotherapist Rickard Dahan to bring them back.
Ibrahimovic often gets a lot of criticism but let's be clear about one thing: he was spot on in the aftermath of the game at the Olympic Stadium in Kiev. He had done everything that could have been asked of him (apart from maybe directing a header inside the post in the first half rather than hitting it): he had worked hard, he had created all the chances Sweden had mustered, and he had tried to lift his team from an unexpected first-half slumber.
This was the new, mature Zlatan we were seeing. A world-class player who has finally grown up. And then his team-mates let him down. Massively.
The Sweden manager, Erik Hamren, was equally harsh in his criticism, saying that the players were "cowards" in the first half.
He added: "We didn't show the courage we were supposed to. Only five or six players did. We all need all the players doing that. We were cowards in the first half and should have done more. I'm not happy with the team, I was expecting more."
On Tuesday morning, having slept two hours after staying up to 4.30am to watch a rerun of the game, he was equally gloomy. "I watched the game again last night. I was up to 4.30am but I am not complaining. You have the life you deserve. We weren't good enough. We are not happy with the game and the first half was bad.
"I am surprised, disappointed and self-critical over the fact that we didn't make it work. I am self-critical but I do not have an answer. It is OK to be sad for a day and then we start again tomorrow [Wednesday] to prepare for the England game."
The England game has now become a must-win game. A tricky task, of course, but England did not show much going forward against France and it is debatable if Roy Hodgson has an attacking plan or whether he will be happy to sit back against the Swedes as well.
For me, a Swede who has lived in England for the past 15 years, it was particularly galling to hear Alan Hansen, Lee Dixon and Gary Lineker after the game, all saying several times that "England have nothing to fear from either Sweden or Ukraine". Anyone watching England play France could say the same thing about Roy Hodgson's XI.
Sweden now have three days to recover before facing a nation which has not beaten them in a competitive game for more than 40 years. Hamren is likely to make changes and Sunderland's Sebastian Larsson may well replace Mikael Lustig at right-back and Johan Elmander could start up front.
Lustig was the target of criticism on social media with #hållenstolpe (hold on to a post) trending on Twitter after he had let Shevchenko's header past him despite being on near-post duty, but to blame the Celtic defender for the defeat would be unfair. The truth is that the whole team were simply not good enough.
