World Cup round-up

Sweden's early exit from the World Cup had the benefit that I could relax and just watch the games and read the stories. With the matches being aired during working hours (kick-off 11.00 and 14.00 in Sweden) I spent most evenings watching recordings and reruns and decided I really didn't need to do any reporting here. But I should of course have said something about Sweden's final match, so here it comes:

Sweden wins and fails

North Korea - Sweden 1 - 2 (1-1)
Sweden: Hedvig Lindahl (Linköping) - Anna Paulson (Umeå) [69 Sara Johansson (Hammarby)], Hanna Marklund (Sunnanå), Karolina Westberg (Umeå), Frida Östberg (Linköping) - Therese Sjögran (Malmö), Nilla Fischer (Malmö), Caroline Seger (Linköping) - Victoria Svensson (Djurgården) - Lotta Schelin (Göteborg), Hanna Ljungberg [40 Sara Thunebro (Djurgården), 89 Therese Lundin (Malmö)]
Goals: 0-1 Lotta Schelin (4), 1-1 Ri Un Suk (22), 1-2 Lotta Schelin (54)
Attendance: 33,196
It finished like Sweden's championship runs usually does - dejected players sitting and lying around, empty looks and tears. This time it was, unusually, after a victory. But 2-1 against the Korean team wasn't enough when a three goal win was needed to advance. On the bright side, the team pulled themselves together and made a decent performance. Lotta Schelin finally showed why she is a star in the Swedish league. Her second goal featured her trademark run through the defense, the way she has scored most of her 22 domestic goals this season. Therese Sjögran also finished with a great performance, making her one of the few Swedish players that has lived up to expectations. And Karolina Westberg finally got to start, even if this was the one game where I would have picked Stina Segerström. Sweden really needed to score and Stina has shown that she can to lethal on set pieces while Karro with 119 caps still has to get her first national team goal. Hanna Ljungberg's unlucky run-in with one of her teammates towards the end of the first half put her on the injury list once again (presumably for at least a couple of weeks) and might have affected Sweden's performance, but not that much.

Post-WWC talk: A failure but not a disaster

Players, coaches, journalists, fans, all seemed to agree that this was a failure. The result was a failure - even the modest among us talked about advancing from the group as a reasonable goal - and the performance on the pitch was also a failure. The team performed good against North Korea and in the first 30 minutes against USA, but apart from that not so much. So why is that? Competition is tougher, even from also-rans as Nigeria. Last WWC they got a 0-11 scoreline over 3 matches, this year it was 1-4 against the same three opponents. But it wasn't "those !#¤%! 15 minutes against Nigeria", as a redeyed Lotta Schelin put it, that decided Sweden's fate. The post-championship discussion focused on other things.

Injuries to key players before and during the tourmanent was of course brought forward, but also the view that this is what we will have to get used to. We had a head start in this sport, but now we have been caught up and big football nations like Brazil and England will only get better and will be followed by others. But most of the post-championship discussion was about things that could have been done different.

Coach Thomas Dennerby recieved a lot of critisism. The Olympic Committee repeated their old view that the team is not physically fit enough, which Dennerby responded to as untrue - Sweden did not lose points because the players were more tired than the other team - and an easy thing to comment on if you don't understand the finer points of the game. More common critisism was over Dennerby's preparations (sightseeing and shopping instead of serious match preparations), his sometimes dubious substitutions, his clinging on to the 4-3-3 tactics far to long, when the players that initially prompted this new set-up already had been lost to injuries, the lack of a really visible game-plan and, though this was mostly a tabloid view, being far too happy, content and optimistic during the tournament. There were demands that he should be released from his position as head coach. But the more knowledgable and sane critics had a different view. One of TV4's experts explained immideately efter the Korea match that Dennerby will not get fired: "That's not the way we do it in Sweden" and pointing to the the men's national team, where coaches has been allowed an initial failure and progressed to really successfull performances after that. And, as TV4's Malin Svedberg pointed out, it is his duty to keep up a good mood and show confidence in his team as long as there still are matches to play. Anything else would be letting the team down.
Two prominent club coaches has also commented. Sweden had, as they habitually do championship years, the annual Damallsvenskan coaches conference at the WWC location. Not everyone went to China, some of those because their coaching contracts will not be renewed, but Umeå's Andrée Jeglertz and Malmö's Jörgen Pettersson were two of them and both wrote articles on Sweden's performance afterwards. Jeglertz emphatically denied that the players were lacking in fitness or otherwise being unprepared for the championship. Instead he focused on the team's tactics. "If a team has a working game-plan it should be visible from the stands. I couldn't see any". He also saw this as a problem in all current Swedish women's national teams, from the seniors over the U21/23's and down to the teenage teams. His article, published at Umeå's website, got a lot of press, but Dennerby, pointed out by Jeglertz without his name being mentioned, refused to reply. "It doesn't deserve a comment" was his only comment. Malmö's Jörgen Pettersson, partly in reply to Jeglertz, didn't want to take part in any blame-game: "It seems like everybody tries to put the blame away from themselves" and stated that there were several points were improvement could be made, even suggesting giving in to the Olympic Committee's demands for more fitness tests and training.

Some concern has also been voiced for the future of the women's league in the wake of the World Cup failure, but few are really worried. The league has established itself on a high level, both in quality and in attention from fans, sponsors and media, and is a very attractive arena for world class players. Apart from the 21 players in the Swedish team, there were an additional 12 present Damallsvenskan players in the World Cup teams and another 9 Damallsvenskan alumni.


Comments
Posted by: Anonym

where can i find the article from jeglerz?


i don't agree with Malin Svedberg about Dennerby having to remain positive after a game when there are still games left.
i don't think there is anything wrong with being mad and frustrated that night and then the next morning moving on and accepting what happened.
the way he reacted made me feel like this was a team of 15 year old girls he was coaching, not a women's national team.
give me a break.
i am still pissed about it.

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