[1/3]Football Soccer – FIFA Ladies’s International Cup Australia and New Zealand 2023 – Crew G – Sweden Coaching – NZ Campus of Innovation and Recreation, Wellington, New Zealand – July 28, 2023 Sweden’s Fridolina Rolfo right through coaching REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli
MELBOURNE, Aug 5 (Reuters) – In-form Sweden are assured they may be able to beat holders United States in Sunday’s Ladies’s International Cup final 16 tie once they move head-to-head on Sunday, the most recent in an extended record of clashes between the 2 heavyweights at primary tournaments.
The 2 groups have met in six earlier editions of the International Cup, every time within the staff degree. Sweden ended the American citizens’ 2016 Rio Olympic run within the quarter-final and gained 3-0 within the staff degree on the 2021 Tokyo Video games.
They’d contrasting routes to this 12 months’s knockout degree, with Sweden topping their staff with a really perfect file whilst the U.S. scraped thru after completing runners-up. However the third-ranked Swedes aren’t anticipating anything else not up to the most efficient.
“I do not care about favourites and such things as that,” trainer Peter Gerhardsson mentioned. “We’ve got the likelihood to win the sport, and that’s the reason an important factor… We all know what we are up in opposition to.
“You’ll be able to discuss revenge or underdog mentality. For me, that is not going to make the variation the next day to come. It is the avid gamers who play. The historical past is not anything.
“I’ve nice self assurance on this squad and in all of the arrangements that we’ve got made… Our feeling is that we imagine we will win this recreation.”
The U.S. gained just one staff recreation and scored 4 objectives. Sweden out-scored their combatants 9-1, however forwards Fridolina Rolfo and Kosovare Asllani nonetheless warned in opposition to writing off the top-ranked American citizens.
“We have heard the discussions that they have not carried out on the perfect degree, however we understand how just right they’re,” Rolfo mentioned. “We need to be 100% ready and provides our absolute best for profitable that recreation.”
Rolfo and Asllani have been each a part of the Sweden crew that misplaced 2-0 to the usin the 2019 International Cup staff degree. The American citizens went directly to win their fourth name, whilst Sweden completed 0.33.
“We adore those do-or-die video games,” Asllani mentioned. “We by no means underestimate any groups on this match, particularly now not the U.S.
“We come into this with nice self assurance after the crowd degree and are actually having a look ahead to the sport.”
Reporting via Hritika Sharma in Hyderabad; Enhancing via William Mallard
Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Believe Ideas.
