Peter Gerhardsson’s plans for Monday night sounded blissful. He had set a while apart for a swim. He would have a chunk to eat, after which retire to his room at Auckland’s palatial Cordis Resort to hearken to some music.
He additionally wished to make additional inroads into “Resonance,” the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa’s examination of how we work together with the world. Gerhardsson is having fun with it enormously; his readiness to debate it makes that abundantly clear. He figured he might match all of that in and nonetheless be in mattress by 9 p.m. He does have a World Cup semifinal to educate on Tuesday, in spite of everything.
Ought to that final prospect have been inflicting Gerhardsson, the supervisor of Sweden’s girls’s soccer crew, any kind of stress or pressure as he addressed the information media a day earlier than his crew performs Spain at Eden Park, he hid it extraordinarily nicely.
He has, in spite of everything, been right here earlier than: That is his fourth main match in command of his homeland, and it’s the fourth time he has made the semifinals. Sweden completed third within the 2019 World Cup, gained the silver medal within the 2020 Olympics, after which reached the final 4 eventually summer season’s European Championship. By this stage, it’s acquainted floor.
He was relaxed sufficient, then, not solely to debate his studying materials however the philosophical imprint of Johan Cruyff; the artwork of scrapbooking; and his longstanding — if, being fully trustworthy, barely dwindling — custom of calling his mom earlier than video games to solicit her recommendation. (He doesn’t do it fairly so typically now, he stated, as a result of he’s “sufficiently old to make my very own selections.” Gerhardsson is 63.)
Solely as soon as did he betray even the merest trace of irritation: on the lingering notion that Sweden’s progress to the semifinals previous each the USA, the reigning champion, and a broadly admired Japan aspect has are available a trend which may not be described as aesthetically pleasing.
Sweden’s main aim scorer, for instance, is Amanda Ilestedt, a central defender who wouldn’t have been regarded earlier than the match as an apparent contender to win the World Cup’s Golden Ball. “No one was anticipating her to do this,” her teammate Fridolina Rolfo stated.
Ilestedt, although, has now plundered 4 targets — a tally bettered within the match solely by Japan’s Hinata Miyazawa — all from set items, both on the first or second take away. She has proved notably adept at rising victorious when the ball is ricocheting across the penalty space within the aftermath of a nook or free kick. Or, in Gerhardsson’s relatively extra poetic rendering, “choosing up the fruit when it has fallen from the tree.”
That, partially, illustrates why Sweden has proved such a magnet for euphemism. Gerhardsson’s crew has variously however constantly been described all through this match as “direct,” or “efficient,” or “bodily.” Jorge Vilda, the Spanish coach, added “sturdy” to that listing.
All of those phrases imply the identical factor: Sweden is a set-piece crew, a long-ball crew, a percentages crew. The allegation is unstated, however it’s loud, and it’s clear: Sweden is likely to be successful, however it’s doing it in a fashion that’s — on some ethical or religious or philosophical degree — mistaken.
Someplace beneath his placid floor, that suggestion clearly irks Gerhardsson. “One in every of our strengths is about items,” he stated Monday. “Each within the offense and within the protection.” He grew to become just a bit extra animated. “It’s not only a energy: We now have gamers who’re very technically expert at it. We observe rather a lot.”
It’s not all they’re, he stated, noting, “It is only one means for us to win video games.” However even when it was, would that basically be such an issue? Gerhardsson wished to make this level very clearly: Set items, he stated, “are a part of the sport.”
They’re, after all. His logic is impeccable. His job, and that of his gamers, is to win soccer matches. It’s not to win in any explicit type. Nobody sort of play that achieves that aim is extra virtuous than some other. In addition to, aesthetics are subjective: Gerhardsson, for what it’s price, likes Sweden’s combination of excessive stress and dogged, intense marking. “It’s good soccer for me,” he stated.
The faint disregard for Sweden, as a substitute, says extra about soccer’s fashions than it does concerning the inherent price of the crew. Not like its opponent on Tuesday, Spain, Sweden doesn’t declare to espouse or symbolize any explicit philosophy. It’s involved much less with how the sport as a complete needs to be performed and extra with how any particular person match is likely to be gained.
If it has an id, certainly, it’s a reactive one. “We’re superb at adapting,” the midfielder and captain Kosovare Asllani stated. “We now have an excellent crew across the crew. They do a whole lot of work for us to organize the techniques to face any crew within the match. We now have alternative ways to face completely different video games. They permit us to be totally ready for anybody.”
That flexibility meant the Swedes couldn’t be bodily intimidated by the USA and couldn’t be undone by Japan’s slick, ingenious counterpunches. They could have required a penalty shootout, settled solely by the narrowest margin possible, to beat the U.S., however in opposition to Japan they had been ready to grind their opponent down. Ilestedt opened the scoring from a nook. Filippa Angeldal settled the sport with a penalty.
It was put to Gerhardsson that Spain may finest be regarded as a mix of these two opponents: simply as sturdy, simply as imposing because the U.S., however no much less technically gifted than Japan. He agreed. Spain is an excellent crew, he stated. He has at all times been a Cruyffian at coronary heart, an admirer of the intricate, technical soccer that Spain has come to characterize.
He didn’t sound intimidated. He didn’t sound troubled in any respect, in actual fact. The thrust of the e book by Rosa on his night time desk, as Gerhardsson explains it, is that we — as people — are usually not good at accepting that we have no idea what’s going to occur. To him, that has at all times been the fantastic thing about soccer: It’s unpredictable.
An unheralded Sweden crew may get previous the USA and Japan. It’d run into Spain, lengthy hailed as girls’s soccer’s coming pressure, and be anticipated to be swept apart by its sheer philosophical purity. Or it would end up otherwise. “Perhaps they’re the right opponents for us,” Gerhardsson stated of Spain. He doesn’t know. He’s OK with that. He’s, in actual fact, completely relaxed about it.