Swedish speakers of English have received recognition for their internationally intelligible pronunciation. Reflecting this, English phonetics in teacher education programmes seems to take two extreme positions: either marginalised or acting as a 'pusher' demanding native-like accent from teachers and their pupils. This study aims to explore pre-service teachers' perspectives on the English phonetics lessons that sought 'third' positioning, promoting English as a global lingua franca and bidirectional intelligibility of pronunciation in international contexts. It is argued that phonetics, as a subject, can be a suitable tool for helping teachers to set the goal of English pronunciation in view of the pervasive role of English as a global communication tool. Together with presenting the finding, I discuss its implications for teacher education in Sweden.