Sheffield. Sweden chose to form a back line.
Something that came as a big surprise to the Netherlands.
– We were sure that they would play against Brazil, said the captain of the national team Mark Parsons.
Peter Gerhardsson has moved to the triple and quadruple line of defense since taking over as captain of the national team in 2017.
In the opening match against Holland, the choice fell on the back line – which brought a huge surprise to the opponent.
– The short answer. No, we believed in a kind of 4-4-2. But we handled it well and kept our cool, which is important, says national team captain Mark Parsons.
Defender Dominic Jansen believes it could be considered a defensive move by Sweden.
– But at the same time they wanted to push us… It was a very good match for all of women’s football, she says.
Midema: “The Three Cliffs of Love”
Attacking star Vivian Miedema praises the Swedish back line.
– They have a lot of quality there and some I meet every week, says Midema.
– But it was okay for me. I made a lot of surfaces for myself and probably preferred them to play three defense today because it gave us a lot of surfaces between parts of the team. Then we needed to change two things.
Lena Hurtig points out that this isn’t the first time a starting eleven has been formed in this way.
– We’ve played this formation before in a few matches, so it was not surprising for us, says the Swede.
– I think it worked well. It was our first match, it was very tense. This makes it difficult to evaluate, but I think there are things to build on.
‘The four-way line of defense might be better’
Peter Gerhardsson was not completely satisfied with the result.
– He says it’s always disappointing not to win.
If this was final, would you have lined up the team the same way then?
– There are a lot of things that affect everything. This was the first match of the tournament. I always start from the quality of the player and his individual skills. If we could kind of improve our plays by backing away from their two-fronted system a bit. It is possible that we did in the final as well. We did it today…
Then the league leader finally adds:
– But playing with a four-way line of defense could have been good too, maybe it could have been better.
Vivian Miedema believes the Netherlands should be proud of their efforts.
– Looking at 15-20 minutes, we should be very proud to get a point here today. Midema says Sweden is one of the favorites, and that’s the role it should play.
– So we’re proud.