ZURICH: Sweden keeper Jennifer Falk made four penalty shootout saves but still managed to end up on the losing side as England triumphed 3-2 on penalties after a 2-2 draw in their Women’s Euro quarter-final on Thursday, leaving the Swedes distraught.
Falk played both the hero and the villain, making save after save from a succession of poorly-struck England penalties, but when she had the chance to win it, she fired her own effort way over the bar.
With Lucy Bronze finally scoring for England, the pressure piled on to teenager Smilla Holmberg, but she blasted the final effort horribly high to send the reigning champions through to face Italy in the semi-finals.
“It’s a tough loss, when it comes in that way too. We were very close, both in the penalty shoot-out and in the game when we led 2-0,” Sweden coach Peter Gerhardsson said.
With five Swedes failing from the spot there will not be the usual spotlight on “the one who missed”, but a distraught Holmberg was still comforted by her team-mates.
England beat Sweden in sensational penalty shoot-out to reach Women’s Euro semis
“Everyone supports her, and not only her – the sadness is not because you are 18, others are just as sad at 27 or 30. What you saw after the shoot-out was support; everyone supported one another,” Gerhardsson said.
“It will be difficult to deal with later, but we in the coaching team made the choice of players, and we have never been cowardly to make a decision, but sometimes things do not go your way.”
Pundits in Swedish media immediately criticised Gerhardsson for giving an 18-year-old the responsibility of keeping Sweden in the tournament when more experienced attacking players had yet to take a penalty in the shoot-out.
“It’s the coaches who decided that,” he said. “We have 11 players who can stand there. It’s small margins, it’s very hard to prepare for, it’s been that way all the time. If they miss, someone else should have taken it, and if they score, it was right.
“You can’t have that kind of hindsight, you have to make the choice.”
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