Ack -- Fotbollsgalan has snuck upon us! Criminy, I almost missed it. The opening montage featured women footballers rather prominently. Let's see how that holds up for the rest of the evening. Now they appear to be Dane-baiting. Classy, as always! And the year's breakthorugh goes to Stina Blackstenius! In a prefectly reasonable black dress. Harrumph.
Pictures and such may be found here, among other places. http://www.expressen.se/sport/?ar=true#silp_uid=WodaKJyjWGm3ioo4ofedRyTjdqU (Sloppy reporting, i know, but i'm hurrying to catch up...) See Marta give her pick for the Diamond Ball award! http://www.expressen.se/tv/sport/marta-tippar-diamantbollen/ Meanwhile, Dane Pernille Harder has won year's forward. Lordy, but that woman has some arm muscles on her, and a lovely maroon sleeveless dress for showing them off. Don't care much for the chunky black shoes, nor for the two adorable (cough, retch) children up on stage to help hand out awards. "Fans of the year" or something, but they still have to be wrenched into place on stage.
Therese Sjögran wins an ad hoc lifetime acheivement. Of course, my cable froze just as her retrospective began, and didn't unfreeze until her acceptance speech was nearly over. Harrumph again! Now some tweeny boys are disporting themselves on the stage, to the shrieks of what sounds like a horde of tweeny girls. Good thing we've got all that distracting 'fotboll' stuff out of the way to make room for them!
Everyone's clothing seems to have been fine. Normal. Well-fitting. Boring. No crazy hair* or racoon eyes; no 'dress like a pirate' themes. Marta seemed professionally done up, and her hair is becoming Swedified. Zlatan gets his next one free, after getting his tenth gold ball stamp. The oddest thing from my viewpoint was Luis Figo in the audience and on stage, a player who I certainly had a bit of a soccer crush on back in the day.
A little update on some big winter signings so far: Top scorer Gaelle Enganamouit from Eskilstuna to Rosengård. Rosengård also adding American Ella Masar to the squad and stealing Lieke Martens from Göteborg. Swedish top scorer Pauline Hammarlund from Piteå to Göteborg. Also a bunch of other Swedish talent joining the club including excellent gk Jennifer Falk. But ouch... Melis, Martens and van de Donk all gone. More internationals to the Mallbacken woods: NZ midfielder Kirsty Yallop, aussie mf Tameka Butt and Scottish gk Lee Alexander. Newcomers Djurgården with 3 big signings so far: Swedish NT midfielder Emilia Appelqvist, German mf Katrin Schmidt and Icelandic gk Gudbjörg Gunnarsdottir. Our next Champions League team Eskilstuna United lost some big names like Enganamouit and Petra Larsson. Bringing in some top Swedish talent including Marija"Maredinho" Banusic and U19 captain Nathalie Björn plus Norwegian midfielder Ingrid Schjelderup.
Is Marija"Maredinho" Banusic really 'top Swedish talent'? She was rather underwhelming for Chelsea, from what I saw?
Yes, I can understand that you question that after this season, her career stopped pointing upwards for sure. But she was very dominant in the youth national teams and got an early debut for the full NT. Hopefully she'll get back on the right track again in the new club.
The last time Banusic impressed me was when she played for Sirius, but I presumed that was because I hadn't seen much of her. At Sirius she was a fighter with some blinding technical abilities, but she was inconsistent. I thought maybe she'd improve with age. No? She's still only 20 or thereabouts.
She seems to be liking it at her new club, today she was having fun with the Göteborg defense in a friendly.