Man, Umeå is a strong side. Here are some reasons Umeå will pull through: Ljungberg Östberg Sjöström Moström Marklund Lundgren As much as my heart is with Svensson and crew, I think it may take a mini miracle for them to pull one over Umeå.
I'll see your and raise you Bengtsson, Svensson, Törnqvist, James, Johansson, and Thunebro. And throw in Coach Dennerby for good measure. Sure, Umeå is pretty good. All the greater glory for DIF!
Ah...touche. But can they bounce back from their recent 6-2 defeat?! That is the REAL question. PS. And, being the dumbass I am, forgot to add Marta to my previous list. Match that!
Re: Hey Umeå fans! (R) I will match that by counting Bengtsson twice, who is having one heck of a year. And that 6-2 defeat? They put in all their second string, just to make Umeå feel better about themselves.
Re: Hey Umeå fans! (R) I'm happy I didn't put money on this one. Check out the write-ups on www.uefa.com.
Re: Hey Umeå fans! (R) Heja DIF! Woo-hoo! Here's hoping the team that can stop Ljungberg and Marta can also stop Julie Fleeting (who one of my favorite WUSA players, I am sorry to cheer against her). Umeå will have one more chance for revenge in the Svenska Cup this Saturday... they must be pretty mad by now...
Re: Hey Umeå fans! (R) Link to highlights, result included in title though.... [result]If you go here ( http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=1884 ) and click on where it says "6/11 Dubbelt cupguld för Dif," you can see the highlights.[/result]
Re: Hey Umeå fans! (R) I would have agreed with your statement, but now, with 20/20 hindsight, I'd say they must be pretty crap by now. There's no way Umeå will bounce back in 2005, having lost half their defensive line (although adding one of the top 3 Swedish defenders and a Brazilian NT defender), and the striker Kalmari to the very arch enemy, who in their turn didn't do any major changes at all to their team, except for some fine tuning and the addition of Kalmari and a bunch of very talanted Hammarby players. With MFF badly decimated as well, there are no real challengers to the championship. My only hope now is that DIF get beat by the Gunners again in the Women's cup. Having Djurgården fail at least something would be a slight, but only slight, consolation.
To be fair, Lundgren wasn't playing any of the last four games against DIF though, and Ljungberg hadn't fully recovered from her ACL injury. But still, they should have pulled through. The problem was the defense though. DIF never had any play going, except their lightning fast counter attacks, which isn't really a huge problem if you have an above average defense which Umeå used to have. Since Umeås defense was clearly sub par, especially towards the end of the season, DIF got through to score those game winning goals while Umeå had problems tricking the excellent DIF defense, despite dominating the matches in terms of possession. Still... 2004 sucked badly. I hope for a better 2005, Happy New Year everybody!
Nothing wrong with lightning-fast counterattacks. A defense that includes Östberg cannot be considered sub-par. And a gott nytt år to you as well. Looking forward to further discussion of DIF dominance! (and Swedish victory in England)