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The Independent
29 minutes ago
- The Independent
Why did goalkeeper Jennifer Falk take Sweden's fifth penalty against England?
On the eve of Sweden's Euro 2025 quarter-final against England, in what transpired to be his final match in charge, Peter Gerhardsson was asked for an insight into how he prepares his team for penalty shoot-outs. Gerhardsson gave a long response, essentially explaining that it was impossible to pick five players to take a penalty until the moment actually arrived. 'This is one of the most difficult moments in football,' Gerhardsson said. 'Because it is so difficult to prepare for. It is difficult to have a plan. No one knows what our final 11 will look like after 120 minutes. It's one of the most unpredictable things in football.' Gerhardsson's point was actually illustrated by England's final 11 that finished extra time: a random assortment of emergency defenders, impact forwards, and an improvised midfield of Grace Clinton, Lauren James and Beth Mead to hold it all together. This was certainly not Sarina Wiegman's plan, which had long been thrown out of the window. As Sweden's players huddled together at the end of extra time, Gerhardsson surveyed his options and chose his takers. The Sweden squad had held a team meeting before their quarter-final and concluded that they wanted the decision taken out of their hands: Gerhardsson and his coaching staff would list the penalty takers in order, from one to 11. 'They wanted that order so we listened,' Gerhardsson later explained. 'That made it easier for us. We picked the ones we believed in.' Within that, Gerhardsson and his coaching staff made a choice that would later define the shoot-out. There was an audible gasp in the Stadion Letzigrund as goalkeeper Jennifer Falk stepped forward to take Sweden's fifth penalty. Having saved three penalties herself, she now had the chance to send Sweden through to the semi-finals. Standing on the line, England's Hannah Hampton did not know what to do. The England goalkeeper and Wiegman's backroom team had done their research, compiling the numbers and trends behind Sweden's strongest penalty takers, such as Fridolina Rolfo, Stina Blackstenius and Kosovare Asllani. But with those starting forwards off the pitch and out of the equation, there was no record of Falk's penalty history, in terms of taking them, to consult. 'I was more panicking that we didn't have any data on her or where she was going so I was like oh my goodness this is down to me,' Hampton said. 'I was a bit surprised but she did unbelievably well in the shoot-out herself with the amount of saves that she did. I was thinking she might just focus on saving them like I tried to do.' With a place in the semi-finals on the line, Falk's run-up hardly suggested a confident penalty taker. It was the same technique as taking a goal-kick, and Falk's strike followed the same trajectory as it sailed over the bar. "Peter asked if I could do it and then I said yes,' Falk later said, as reported by Expressen. 'I just thought I would take a few deep breaths and put it to the left, which I didn't do. It was f---ing c--p and then it was just about focusing on saving the next penalty." "It's the coaches who decided that," Gerhardsson confirmed. "We have 11 players who can stand there. It's small margins, it's very hard to prepare for, it's been that way all the time. If they miss, someone else should have taken it, and if they score, it was right.' Falk saved Grace Clinton's effort in sudden death to give Sweden another chance to reach the semi-finals, but Hampton then dived to her right to keep out Sofia Jacobson's penalty at full stretch. After Lucy Bronze psyched out Falk by blasting down the middle - 'I watched the goalkeeper in every penalty and she dived quite early,' Bronze explained - the pressure fell onto Sweden's 18-year-old Smilla Holmberg. Another penalty sailed over the bar to send England through. 'Everyone supports her, and not only her,' said Gerhardsson, who is stepping down after the Euros. 'The sadness is not because you are 18, others are just as sad at 27 or 30. What you saw after the shoot-out was support; everyone supported one another. 'It will be difficult to deal with later, but we in the coaching team made the choice of players, and we have never been cowardly to make a decision, but sometimes things do not go your way.'
The Independent
29 minutes ago
- The Independent
Trump says he wants to ditch the word ‘soccer'. Does America finally understand football?
The world's most popular sport continues to be plagued by a linguistic divide, a debate recently reignited by U.S. President Donald Trump. While much of the globe refers to it as football, Americans stubbornly cling to the term 'soccer'. Speaking at the Club World Cup final in New Jersey last Sunday, The President light-heartedly suggested he could issue an executive order to align the United States with the rest of the world. "I think I could do that," he quipped with a smile during an interview with host broadcaster DAZN. Despite the tone, the comments underscore a persistent question, particularly as the U.S. plays an increasingly significant role in the sport. Why do Americans insist on a different name? Mr Trump himself acknowledged the challenge, stating: "They call it football, we call it soccer. I'm not sure that change could be made very easily." Soccer keeps growing in the U.S. and so does its influence on the sport. It is co-hosting the men's World Cup with Canada and Mexico next year — the third year in a row that it stages a major tournament after the 2024 Copa America and this summer's Club World Cup. Other factors are keeping soccer more often in the U.S. consciousness -- and perhaps they will make saying 'football" more commonplace in a tough sporting landscape. One of the greatest players of all time, Lionel Messi, plays for MLS team Inter Miami; the popularity of the Premier League and Champions League is booming; and the documentary series 'Welcome to Wrexham' about a low-level Welsh club co-owned by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, has attracted new eyeballs. Despite 'soccer' being widely associated with the U.S., it is commonly accepted that the word was actually coined in Britain, perhaps as far back as the 1880s. The exact date when it was first used is not known, but it is believed 'soccer' was derived from 'association football,' which was the first official name of the sport. The charity English Heritage says the nickname may have first been used by pupils at the iconic Harrow School to 'distinguish the new association game from their older pursuit, known as 'footer.'' Numerous versions of football began to flourish, often involving handling a ball more than kicking it. One example dating back to the 1600s and still played today in England is Royal Shrovetide. Rugby is another example. The English Football Association was created in 1863 and drew up codified rules for associated football to set it apart from other versions being played elsewhere in Britain and, from there, soccer as we know it was born. Dr. Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan, wrote the book 'It's Football, Not Soccer (And Vice Versa)' and explored the origins of the name. In a lecture to the American University of Beirut in 2019 he said soccer was 'very clearly a word of English/British origin.' 'And bear in mind that the name 'association football' doesn't really appear until the 1870s," he said, 'so it appears really very early on in the history of the game and the word 'soccer' has been used over and over again since it was coined at the end of the 19th century.' Soccer was a commonly used term in Britain 'Soccer' is not a commonly used term in Britain these days but that has not always been the case. It was the title of a popular Saturday morning television show, 'Soccer AM,' which ran from 1994 to 2023 on the Premier League's host broadcaster Sky Sports. England great and 1966 World Cup winner Bobby Charlton ran popular schools for decades, titled 'Bobby Charlton's Soccer School.' And Matt Busby — Manchester United's iconic manager who won the 1968 European Cup — titled his autobiography, which was published in 1974, 'Soccer at the Top, My Life in Football." That book title suggests the terms 'soccer' and 'football' were interchangeable in British culture at that time. Szymanski suggested the problem some people have with 'soccer' isn't the word at all. But rather that it is specifically used in America. 'It's when Americans use this word that we get the outpourings of distress and horror, and one of the most popular thoughts that people throw at this is to say that American football is not really football,' he said in his lecture. He argued that given the overwhelming popularity of the NFL in the U.S. it makes perfect sense to differentiate between soccer and its own version of football. Not just Americans call it soccer The use of the word 'soccer' is a bit more confused in other countries. Australia, which has its own Australian rules football along with both rugby codes, commonly uses the term and its national men's team are known as the Socceroos. It's soccer federation, however, is called Football Australia. It's a similar situation in Ireland, where Gaelic football is popular. The term 'soccer' is used but the national soccer team is still governed by a body called the Football Association of Ireland. Canada, like the U.S. simply calls it soccer, which clearly distinguishes it from the NFL and Canadian Football League.
The Independent
29 minutes ago
- The Independent
Chloe Kelly hails Michelle Agyemang as equaliser helps book England's semis spot
England forward Chloe Kelly hailed Arsenal team-mate Michelle Agyemang after the 19-year-old's vital equaliser helped book the Lionesses a trip to the Euro 2025 semi-finals in a dramatic comeback penalty shootout victory over Sweden. The defending champions were 11 minutes away from an agonising exit in their Zurich quarter-final, desperate for a breakthrough after twice conceding in a disappointing first half, when seven-time major tournament veteran Lucy Bronze clawed a goal back in the 79th minute. Less than two minutes later, Agyemang – winning just her third senior cap after coming on in a 70th-minute triple change – drew the sides level to force extra time, before Bronze finally netted the decisive spot-kick with England's seventh attempt in an error-plagued shootout. 'I literally, just speaking to her throughout the game, I was like 'come alive now Mich, come alive now', and for the next five minutes I felt like she had real energy,' said fellow substitute Kelly, who successfully converted her penalty and provided pivotal crosses for both England goals. 'She's a bright young girl, she brings such strength to our squad – her power, her speed – and holds the ball up really well, so it's incredible to see her shine on the big stage.' The topsy-turvy last-eight clash drew a peak TV audience of 7.4 million – or 65 per cent of TV audiences at the time – to BBC One, as well as three million online streams. Agyemang has now netted in two of her first three England appearances, after memorably scoring 41 seconds into her senior debut in April. She was one of the brightest sparks late on in the Lionesses' tournament-opening defeat to France and England's youngest player seized her chance again on Thursday night, moments after their oldest and most experienced had given them a grain of hope. Agyemang exudes a beyond-her-years maturity and self-assuredness, telling reporters after the loss to France: 'I think most of the pressure comes from myself. I don't try to listen to the noise.' She spent the most recent Women's Super League campaign on loan to Brighton, but has since been recalled by the Champions League winners. Arsenal forward Beth Mead, who was introduced alongside the teenager in the second half, was full of praise for England's substitutes, who once again came through when it counted most. 'You need a full squad,' said Mead. 'I felt every single girl that came on the pitch today made an impact for the team, whether it was defensively (or) attacking. 'Gets you through the game. You've got a big job coming on at 2-0 down, so to change the game, you've just got to be ruthless and go for it and I think a lot of us did that. 'I think I cried like a baby (at the final whistle). It's just a lot of emotion. You've been in these positions before and we've fallen short. 'We worked so hard to get back into the game and to not get it over the line, I think was a scary thought, but we're just very happy to have won.' England next face Italy in Tuesday's semi-final in Geneva, where they will hope to have Leah Williamson back in action after she rolled her ankle in extra-time against Sweden. While the England captain was spotted in a boot and crutches on Thursday, that is understood to have been a precautionary measure.
