Really? I only made it as far as "joke award" before it set me off wondering whether she has comedy talents that haven't surfaced in Sweden yet. But that's fine by me. Less is more.
Ha! Oh but she does, and they have. Surely you haven't forgotten about 'building a better product'? That was a good one.
Bah and dammit: in a 'dearly-bought victory' for K/Göteborg over Piteå last weekend, Sarah Lindén tore her ACL and will be out for 6 months. She vows to be back, of course, and more power to her; that's a tough injury for a 29-year-old to shake off. K/G was up 2-0 through much of the second half, with goals by Christen Press and Linnea Liljegärd, but finished the game with only 9 players on the field. Lindén's injury happened after K/G had already used all of its subs, and then goalkeeper Kristin Hammarström got a suspected concussion in the last few minutes. K/G Midfielder Johanna Almgren was then awarded the privilege of playing keeper, and Piteå's Jennifer Nobis scored during the 6 minutes of extra time. I wonder if this means that Almgren will have a 'goals against' statistic now.
I always wonder how they decide on field players to take on GK spots... Do they do this sort of testing beforehand to figure out a list? Or is it just random picking?
Back in the good old days, on your high-quality team, at any given time, one of the field players would be the 'secret keeper'. They had been carefully selected beforehand for this glorious and most wholesome duty, in a pre-game ritual involving self-mortification and pinky-swearing. Afterward, if that player was fortunate enough to be actually put into goal during the game, the team would either buy her an ice cream, or the player would proudly get a smily-face tattoo on her [classified information], depending on whether she was scored on or not. These days, with these cheap-o managers and puritanically-minded players? Most the time, when they hear that someone must play keeper, they all start screaming "Not it, not it!" and running off the field as fast as their skinny little legs can take them. Losers.
Spoken like a scarred veteran goalie! You know, with the Euros coming up, I suggest that we take some time out of our busy July 2013 schedule to establish where jocasta's smiley faced tattoos are.
I deny everything except maybe the scarred veteran bit. No smiley faces here, those are only for triumphant 'secret keepers' and I was never one of them myself. Me, I couldn't keep a secret to save my life, no indeedy I couldn't. The Sirius Victory Train continued through Norettan this past weekend, with a 0-4 away victory over Vasalund, despite what is reported as their worst half of play ever. American Sarah Elnicky opened the scoring, then Marija Banusic added two more, and Mikaela Björklund added the fourth. Two of their usual starters sat out, Julia Lyckberg with a sprained foot, and Sarah Storck with one of the following, according to GiggleTranslate: strep throat, tonsillitis, or angina. Umm, those are kinda different things. Just a friendly reminder that one ought not rely on GT for medical advice...
Who watches the watchmen? Well, I do, for one... I opened up yesterday's paper today and got all excited about this headline: 'Öqvist öppnar för spel i Sirius' ('[local minor celebrity Josefine] Öqvist open to play for Sirius'). Could this herald the start of much locally-grown talent* leaving their Damallsvenskan teams and coming back to our humble town on the banks of the mighty mighty River Fyris?? I came to this thread with the express purpose of spreading this rumor in hopes that it would come true. (Say it loud and often enough and it becomes reality, right?) But being a(n otherwise) conscientious type I went to the paper's online version to provide a link to my basis for hope, only I couldn't find the article at first... searching for 'Sirius' only led to stories about this upcoming season's looming bandy disaster... because the headline has magically changed to 'Öqvists skada kan stoppa karriären'! (which I will not translate because I bet you can figure it out if I tell you that 'skada' means injury.) Same story. I know that a newspapers changing a headline is nothing necessarily odd, they do it even between print editions sometimes... but I wonder, in this case, if someone (i.e., Öqvist) yiped about the implication that she was ready, willing, and able to give up life in Malmö if only some nice Uppsala team would come a'callin. I know at least one person who wants to believe that: the newspaper's sports blog (you'll have to scroll down a bit) has two more bits about her. First, the blogger interview Sirius' sportsboss, who says he wouldn't mind having her back*; second, the blogger opines that they key to getting her back here rests to some degree on whether a local hockey club would like to hire her significant other. The blogger 'dares to dream' about the possibility.
*Who is this locally-grown talent? Glad you asked, as Sirius' sportsboss provides a pretty good starting list: Emilia Appelquist, Alexandra Höglund, Linda Sembrant, and Johanna Frisk. According to the blog entry referred to in the last post, those last two are on longer-term contracts with Tyresö. Appelquist also plays for Tyresö; I don't know anything about her contract, but she does get on the field fairly often and might not be too motivated to leave. Höglund, on the other hand, plays for Djurgården who are almost certain at this point to get relegated. (and then abandoned and ignored, if the experience of Hammarby is anything to go on. not that I'm bitter.) Any other uppläningar come to mind?
Sembrant recently came back from injury, but I haven't seen anything on Frisk injury but she doesn't play. What's the deal?
Djurgården are 1-0 up against Tyresö. I think they might have objected to me buying that bottle of "Allesverloren" wine.
Nope, my Relegation Wine lived to fight another day, after a rather pleasant day out! If you zoom in, you can see the nice 2-0 on the scoreboard.
At least according to the coaches in Damallsvenskan. I'd be surprised if she didn't get a few more pats on the head at the football awards, though - which begs the question of what she'll wear .
Just bumped into something somewhere that said Ms. Frisky was due back any day now. The article was published before the Djurgården game (2-0, good times!), but stated that she wasn't expected back for that game, though possibly "next weekend". However, she didn't play against Kristianstad either, nor was she on the bench. Maybe next weekend? Or maybe they're trying to cover up the fact that the Family (their clique of crazy, burly supporters) has made a deal with the construction company that sponsors the team and Ms. Frisky will never be seen again...
Nominees for the annual football awards here. Would any of our Swedish (or almost Swedish) friends care to venture any prognosis?
This looked interesting but it's not like I speak Spanish... ah, ProtagnistasDJ translated for us! (into English, not Swedish)
Do they do a lot of the slip and slide tactic in Damallsvenskan? I suppose that cou;ld be a good, if novel, way to get a header.
They have little choice other than slip-n-slide tactics; if you want to play in Sweden you better be a mudder.
Down to the wire: Here's a link to the current standings in Damallsvenskan, and here's link to the remaining match-ups which are played tomorrow at 13.00. As you can see, the league winner has not yet been established, nor has the second relegation spot. Let's take the losers first. AIK is out, but Djurgården had a late spurt of usefulness (16pts) and could theoretically stay in at KIF Örebro's (19pts) expense, if Djurgården beats Piteå (maybe) and AIK beats Örebro (less likely), and Djurgården also makes up a goal differential of -6 compared to Örebro. Back up at the top of the table, LdB leads with 55 points and a differential of 38, while in an odd coincidence Tyresö has 52 and 52. The two play each other in the last game, so a win by Tyresö wins them the season. (As an aside I'll remind everyone that last year's LdB-hosting-Tyresö game was legendary, a 3-5 barn-burner with red cards galore that Marta watched from the stands (more). They're taking no chances with refs this time, and Jenny Palmqvist will be keeping an eye on things... though perhaps we ought to check out the line judges too. At the moment, sadly, they're not showing that this match will be televised.)