Sweden heads to the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand with a point to prove.
The Swedish team has been one of the pioneers of the modern women’s game and they are expected to go deep at the 2023 tournament, and they have the added incentive of making up for a really poor showing at the European Championships where they were hammered 4-0 by hosts England.
In fact, Sweden have been serial under achievers in recent years, constantly ranked highly by FIFA, currently third in the world, but without a tournament triumph since the 1984 European Championships.
The Swedes are the women’s football equivalent of Belgium!
They were World Cup runners up in 2003 and twenty years on Peter Gerhardsson’s team is desperate to go one step further. This is a squad which has been together for a while and has tasted disappointment by the finest of margins; losing the 2021 Olympic final to Canada in a penalty shootout and losing the 2019 World Cup semi-final to the Netherlands in extra time.
This time around they will have stiff competition from European heavyweights Germany and England, as well as reigning champions the USA, the SBOTOP favourites to win in Oz.
Gerhardsson, who has led the team since 2017, is confident that if his team keeps getting itself into good positions they will eventually pick up some silverware, but they come into this World Cup with only one win in 2023, over China, a 4-1 victory which was followed up by a defeat to Denmark and draws with Germany and Norway.
And the Swedes are drawn in a very difficult group alongside South Africa, Italy and Argentina, all nations capable of making it to the knockout phase. It isn’t quite the Group of Death. That honour goes to the pool which includes Brazil, France and Jamaica, but this is still a tough group, and Sweden will play all their first phase games in New Zealand, starting with South Africa on 23rd July.
Sweden’s key players
There are some very useful attacks in this tournament and Sweden some high quality forwards led by the experienced San Diego Wave striker Sofia Jakobsson; while the Arsenal duo of Stina Blackstenius and Lina Hurtig, both aged 27 will be pushing for a start.
In the middle of the park captain Caroline Seger is set to make her fifth appearance at a World Cup finals tournament and, at 38 years of age and with 235 international appearances to her name, Seger has seen it all. The former Paris Saint-Germain and Olympique Lyon star is now plying her trade with FC Rosengard and she has been in the Sweden set up since 2001 when she starred for the Under 17s. Voted five times Best Swedish midfielder and a member of FIFA’s All Star World Cup Team in 2011, Seger deserves success and her team-mates will do all they can to help her achieve it.
Alongside Seger, 33 year old vice captain Kosovare Asllani can play equally well in midfield or attack. The Milan star, nicknames Kosse, has scored 44 goals in 169 appearances and she possesses frightening pace combined with superb ball control. And versatility is in good supply throughout the Sweden team; winger Fridolina Rolfo has also played at fullback for her club Barcelona. She hit the headlines when she scored the winner for Barca in the 2021 Champions League final and is sure to make some pretty special Women’s World Cup 2023 highlights over the next few weeks. She scored five times in qualifying and Rolfo will be too hot to handle for some defenders in New Zealand.
The Sweden defence is marshalled by the excellent Magdalena Eriksson who now plays for Bayern Munich after winning ten trophies during her time at Chelsea between 2017 and 2023. During the qualifiers Sweden conceded only twice and Erikssen partnered central defender Amanda Ilestedt who has just signed for Arsenal after a successful two seasons at Paris Saint-Germain. She will join Hurtig and Blackstenius in North London and will link up with head coach Jonas Eidevall who managed her at Rosengard. Now 29 years old, Ilestedt is in the prime of her career and will add to her 64 internationals at the World Cup this month.
This is a squad dripping with quality, experience and desire and the Women’s World Cup 2023 betting odds say Sweden are in with a chance of finally picking up some silverware. They should certainly make the quarter finals at the very least, and they need to start well in New Zealand and then…let’s see.
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