For Sweden, the Right Way to Play Is the One That Wins

Peter Gerhardsson’s plans for Monday night sounded blissful. He had set a while apart for a swim. He would have a chew to eat, after which retire to his room at Auckland’s palatial Cordis Hotel to hearken to some music.

He additionally wished to make additional inroads into “Resonance,” the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s examination of how we work together with the world. Gerhardsson is having fun with it enormously; his readiness to debate it makes that abundantly clear. He figured he might match all of that in and nonetheless be in mattress by 9 p.m. He does have a World Cup semifinal to educate on Tuesday, in any case.

Should that final prospect have been inflicting Gerhardsson, the supervisor of Sweden’s ladies’s soccer staff, any type of stress or pressure as he addressed the news media a day earlier than his staff performs Spain at Eden Park, he hid it extraordinarily properly.

He has, in any case, been right here earlier than: This is his fourth main event in command of his homeland, and it’s the fourth time he has made the semifinals. Sweden completed third within the 2019 World Cup, gained the silver medal within the 2020 Olympics, after which reached the final 4 ultimately summer season’s European Championship. By this stage, it’s acquainted floor.

He was relaxed sufficient, then, not solely to debate his studying materials however the philosophical imprint of Johan Cruyff; the artwork of scrapbooking; and his longstanding — if, being utterly trustworthy, barely dwindling — custom of calling his mom earlier than video games to solicit her recommendation. (He doesn’t do it fairly so typically now, he mentioned, as a result of he’s “old enough to make my own decisions.” Gerhardsson is 63.)

Only as soon as did he betray even the merest trace of irritation: on the lingering notion that Sweden’s progress to the semifinals previous each the United States, the reigning champion, and a broadly admired Japan facet has are available a trend which may not be described as aesthetically pleasing.

Sweden’s main objective scorer, for instance, is Amanda Ilestedt, a central defender who wouldn’t have been regarded earlier than the event as an apparent contender to win the World Cup’s Golden Ball. “Nobody was expecting her to do that,” her teammate Fridolina Rolfo mentioned.

Ilestedt, although, has now plundered 4 targets — a tally bettered within the event solely by Japan’s Hinata Miyazawa — all from set items, both on the first or second take away. She has proved notably adept at rising victorious when the ball is ricocheting across the penalty space within the aftermath of a nook or free kick. Or, in Gerhardsson’s moderately extra poetic rendering, “picking up the fruit when it has fallen from the tree.”

That, partly, illustrates why Sweden has proved such a magnet for euphemism. Gerhardsson’s staff has variously however persistently been described all through this event as “direct,” or “effective,” or “physical.” Jorge Vilda, the Spanish coach, added “strong” to that checklist.

All of those phrases imply the identical factor: Sweden is a set-piece staff, a long-ball staff, a percentages staff. The allegation is unstated, however it’s loud, and it’s clear: Sweden is likely to be profitable, however it’s doing it in a fashion that’s — on some ethical or non secular or philosophical stage — flawed.

Somewhere beneath his placid floor, that suggestion clearly irks Gerhardsson. “One of our strengths is set pieces,” he mentioned Monday. “Both in the offense and in the defense.” He turned just a bit extra animated. “It is not just a strength: We have players who are very technically skilled at it. We practice a lot.”

It is just not all they’re, he mentioned, noting, “It is just one way for us to win games.” But even when it was, would that actually be such an issue? Gerhardsson wished to make this level very clearly: Set items, he mentioned, “are part of the game.”

They are, in fact. His logic is impeccable. His job, and that of his gamers, is to win soccer matches. It is to not win in any specific fashion. No one sort of play that achieves that objective is extra virtuous than some other. Besides, aesthetics are subjective: Gerhardsson, for what it’s price, likes Sweden’s combination of excessive strain and dogged, intense marking. “It is good football for me,” he mentioned.

The faint disregard for Sweden, as an alternative, says extra about soccer’s fashions than it does in regards to the inherent price of the staff. Unlike its opponent on Tuesday, Spain, Sweden doesn’t declare to espouse or symbolize any specific philosophy. It is anxious much less with how the sport as a complete ought to be performed and extra with how any particular person match is likely to be gained.

If it has an id, certainly, it’s a reactive one. “We are very good at adapting,” the midfielder and captain Kosovare Asllani mentioned. “We have a very good team around the team. They do a lot of work for us to prepare the tactics to face any team in the tournament. We have different ways to face different games. They allow us to be fully prepared for anyone.”

That flexibility meant the Swedes couldn’t be bodily intimidated by the United States and couldn’t be undone by Japan’s slick, creative counterpunches. They might need required a penalty shootout, settled solely by the narrowest margin conceivable, to beat the U.S., however towards Japan they have been able to grind their opponent down. Ilestedt opened the scoring from a nook. Filippa Angeldal settled the sport with a penalty.

It was put to Gerhardsson that Spain may finest be considered a mixture of these two opponents: simply as robust, simply as imposing because the U.S., however no much less technically gifted than Japan. He agreed. Spain is an excellent staff, he mentioned. He has at all times been a Cruyffian at coronary heart, an admirer of the intricate, technical soccer that Spain has come to characterize.

He didn’t sound intimidated. He didn’t sound troubled in any respect, the truth is. The thrust of the ebook by Rosa on his evening desk, as Gerhardsson explains it, is that we — as people — aren’t good at accepting that we have no idea what’s going to occur. To him, that has at all times been the great thing about soccer: It is unpredictable.

An unheralded Sweden staff may get previous the United States and Japan. It may run into Spain, lengthy hailed as ladies’s soccer’s coming drive, and be anticipated to be swept apart by its sheer philosophical purity. Or it’d prove otherwise. “Maybe they are the perfect opponents for us,” Gerhardsson mentioned of Spain. He doesn’t know. He is OK with that. He is, the truth is, completely relaxed about it.