Injuries are part and parcel of any major football competition. You will seldom see a World Cup, whether that’s at junior or senior level, where every team is at full strength. England came into the Women’s World Cup without the Arsenal duo of Beth Mead and Leah Williamson, who had captained the team to Euro 2022 glory. The Netherlands’ challenge ended in the last eight against Spain, but many of their fans were left to wonder how different their tournament destiny might have been had Vivianne Miedema been fit to play.
The Spanish team that take the field against Sweden in the first semi-final will have absentees of a very different kind. Sandra Paños won the first of her 54 caps for the national team way back in 2012. Her Barcelona teammates, Patricia Guijarro and Mapi León, have 52 and 54 appearances. Clàudia Pina forced herself into the national reckoning after scoring 33 goals for Barcelona over the last two seasons. Not one of the four is in New Zealand and Australia for the World Cup. The quartet were part of a group of 15 that decided last year that they would no longer represent the national team when Jorge Vilda was the coach. The players, four of whom played their club football in England, felt that their preparations and the tactical instructions they got were far inferior to the inputs they were given at club level.
Of the dissenters, Barcelona’s Aitana Bonmati – scorer of two fabulous goals in the round of 16 against Switzerland – and Mariona Caldentey have returned to the fold, as has Ona Batlle, who has just moved to Barcelona after three years with Manchester United. It’s a measure of the talent that Spain have that they have still managed to reach the last four for the first time in their history. Bonmati’s midfield prompting will be key against Sweden, but so will the selfless running of Esther Gonzalez and Alba Redondo, alongside Jenni Hermoso, the veteran who now plays her club football in Mexico.
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But if Spain are to go all the way in this competition, they need more from their star, Alexia Putellas, who hasn’t been at her best since suffering an ACL injury in July 2022. If she can somehow find the form that won her the women’s Ballon d’Or in 2021 and 2022, Spain will be hard to beat.
Sweden though have already got past the USA, who were going for a hat-trick of titles, and Japan, who crushed Spain 4-0 in the league phase. They were fortunate in the extreme against the USA, who fluffed umpteen chances before losing on penalties, but there was nothing lucky about the way they pressed and harried Japan to defeat. Yes, the Japanese missed a spot kick, but Sweden were already two goals to the good by then.
The Swedes will also be anxious to get rid of the eternal-bridesmaids tag. Beaten finalists against Germany in 2003, they also reached the semi-finals in 2011 and 2019. They got to the last four of Euro 2022, before being thumped 4-0 by England, and were heartbroken at losing the Tokyo Olympics final to Canada on penalties. With talents like Magdalena Eriksson and Stina Blackstenius in their ranks, and led by Kosovare Asllani, the 34-year-old attacking midfielder with over 170 caps, this is as good a chance as they’ll get to win the big prize, especially with every previous champion now out of the running.
It would well come down to who wins the midfield battle. And if Vilda can finally unleash Putellas from the start, it should be Spain that march on to the final.
Prediction: Spain 2 Sweden 0
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