For God's sake. Just to recap Sweden's sterling path to the gold medal game: 1) An ugly 1-0 scraping past South Africa off a goalmouth scramble 2) A 1-5 demolishing at the hands of Brazil 3) A scoreless draw against China 4) Defending for 120 minutes versus USA, wins penalties 5) Defending for 120 minutes versus Brazil, wins penalties Worst team to ever make an Olympic soccer final.
3 | 1 0 1 1 0 | #17 Andressinha, right instep to left post 1/3 high, Lindahl dives and saves 4 | 1 0 1 1 1 | #7 Lisa Dahlkvist, right instep to 1/5 right 1/4 high (past or off Bárbara) Andressinha
Anti-soccer wins championships. It is like the ugly stupid return of catenaccio. Sweden Portgual Greece. Names that shall always live in infamy. Time to get rid of PKs and play on with subs. Ridiculous If this is where we are headed, time to start watching basketball I guess
GG everyone, WoSo is dead, parking the bus is now the definitive strategy for winning a medal, long live the Beautiful Game.
Absolutely disgusting and appalling result, not because I was rooting for one team or the other, but simply because the team that actually, you know, *played* football ... lost. Had Sweden at least played a bit, I'd be less sour, but damn... undeserved victory is really friggin' undeserved. This is why I should stop watching this sport. I think that's what I'll do. I'll stick with the NBA, which has extra time until one team actually scores more than the other rather than going for a shootout that defeats the purpose of said sport.
Hahaha, you're leaving out the best part, which is that they barely won a mini UEFA tournament to get in to the OS in the first place! Teehee.
I agree. Let them keep playing. The exhaustion will eventually result in a goal. Someone will crack, or someone will come up with a moment of brilliance. More incentive to try to score if you don't have a shootout to bail you out.
Lindhal is the player of the tournament. She should get the golden boot, ball, glove...i don't care she hasn't scored a goal. she should get them all.
That's right! And the mini-UEFA tournament would not even happen if England/GB was allowed to compete.
I've thought a better end would be start eliminating a player every 10-15 minutes or so. So after 120 minutes, each team is reduced by 1 player. And then after 130, another 1. At least it'd still be the game of soccer, rather than the painful end with KFTPM.
Sweden have eliminated two gold-medal-favorites without actually playing to win after getting through the groups as a third-place team after barely winning a qualification tournament that shouldn't even have happened if British blockheads could play nicely together. Oi vey. I've seen some people on Twitter saying "they're good on defense, they've just played to their strength" - no, a team that's good on defense would only need to rely on their regular backline to stop opposing offenses form scoring, leaving the rest of the team opportunity to attack. Parking the bus is not "good" defense, it's desperate lack of skill. Sweden's regular backline let in five in one match earlier this tournament.
You sound like US fans for the past 4 days. Stop that nonsense! We had numerous chances in the 90+ minutes and couldn't capitalize. Sigh. When Brasil couldn't score against SA, I had a hunch that something was up. I only saw Marta and Lotta's kicks. Couldn't bare to watch the rest. Debinha should have remained in the match. She's golden on PKs. Still proud of my girls. We have a chance at the bronze. Not what we wanted but better considering where we have been as a program for the last 8 years. If we only had Daniela.... Sweden trolling their way to gold. Congrats to them!