Sweden savour winning feeling
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Article summary
Two early goals freed Sweden from any nerves and enabled Thomas Dennerby's side to turn on the power against a Russia team who have now gone seven winless games in European finals.
Article top media content
Article body
Sweden coach Thomas Dennerby said his team were able to relax after two early goals as they ended a run of failing to win the opening game in eight final tournaments by defeating Russia 3-0 in UEFA WOMEN'S EURO 2009™ Group C. In the opposition camp, Russia's Igor Shalimov admitted his team lacked confidence and were unable to overcome their fears at facing such strong opposition.
Thomas Dennerby, Sweden coach
The two early goals meant we could play in a much more relaxed fashion than we have been used to in the 90 minutes of an opening fixture. We have talked about that statistic when we gathered for the pre-camp and we knew the Swedish journalists would remind us that we hadn't won the first game since 1997 or something. Sweden were the better team but Russia showed they are also a good team and can take points from the other teams in the group. Italy are a technical team with good passing players and like to keep the ball in possession. England, we know, like to play at a very high pace so we have two tough games ahead of us.
The whole team defended really well when we needed to. Russia had a couple of situations when they had the chance to score. Some of those were our mistakes when we were pressing the ball in midfield. There was a period in the first half after we had scored the goals when this happened, but overall we are very satisfied. Did it work out better than we thought it might before the game? No, I think it turned out like we thought it would.
Therese Sjögran, Sweden midfielder & Carlsberg Player of the Match
We had a great game today. We scored two early goals and that helped us to release some of our nerves and meant we could play a bit more relaxed.
Igor Shalimov, Russia coach
We did not start the game very confidently and it was clear we could not overcome our fears against such strong opponents. That is how we managed to miss the first two quick goals and the Sweden team are very good with their corner strategy. We had to change our tactics because we had expected to play defensively and to use quick counterattacks. Even though the second goal was kind of unusual, we cannot say all of them were like that. Two goals ahead, the Swedish team were really powerful, but our players got more confident and began to play more evenly. But of course the Swedish team appeared to be stronger than us.