Opinion: Nothing against Sweden, but World Cup final deserves a fresher matchup
LYON, France — Please, not Sweden. Anybody but Sweden.
This is nothing personal against the Scandinavian nation, which is lovely. And is second only to Canada in quality of life rankings. And which makes nice cars. And gave us Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrik Lundqvist, Annika Sorenstam and Dolph Lundgren.
And the guy who created the Nobel Peace Prize, don’t forget about that.
But for the love of God and Mia Hamm, can the U.S. women play someone besides the Swedes?
Sweden and the Netherlands play Wednesday night to determine the U.S. opponent in Sunday’s World Cup final, and who to root for should be obvious.
"I don’t know who (we) will play and I don’t care," U.S. coach Jill Ellis said.
OK, but for the rest of us. A U.S.-Sweden matchup would be the World Cup version of Groundhog Day.
The Americans have faced Sweden in the group stage at the last five World Cups, and six total. Given this is only the eighth edition of the tournament, that’s a lot. They’ve also played Sweden twice at the Olympics, and it was Sweden that knocked the Americans out of the Rio Games in the quarterfinals, their earliest exit ever from a major tournament.
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While there might be some satisfaction to stopping Sweden from winning its first title at either the World Cup or Olympics, it also has a feel of "been there, done that." The ghosts of Rio were exorcised in the finale of the group stage, which the U.S. won 2-0 to claim the top spot in Group F.
There is no question the rivalry has an edge to it, and Sweden believes that the Americans lost their intimidation factor in Rio. That might be true. It’s also true that Sweden is playing well, knocking off Germany in the quarterfinals to avenge the 2016 Olympic final and every other major tournament of the last 20 years. (Sweden hadn’t beaten Germany at a major international tournament since 1991, a stretch of futility that included four finals.)
But sequels are rarely as good as the originals, and we’re on about U.S.-Sweden 85 now.
The Netherlands, however, are fresh and new — both to the Americans and the World Cup. The teams have played just seven times, with the U.S. winning six and the teams tying once, and this is only the second World Cup appearance by the Dutch.
Until recently, in fact, there was scant evidence the Netherlands even had a women’s national team. They qualified for their first Olympics here and didn’t qualify for the European championships for the first time until 2009.
Investment and support has made a huge difference, however, as was seen at the 2017 European championships, which the Dutch both hosted and won. They’ve proven that was no fluke by reaching the semifinal here.
Vivianne Miedema is having as good a tournament as anyone with three goals, and Lieke Martens has two. Shanice van de Sanden has yet to score, but she does so many things on the field that you can’t help but watch her.
And then there are the Dutch fans, who have taken over every city their team has played in and turned it into a rollicking, rolling party. The only people who wouldn’t want to see how the Dutch fans stack up against the U.S. contingent are people who don’t like fun.
I suspect that Sweden is probably the better team — a suspicion shared by England coach Phil Neville, who said his "gut" told him the Three Lionesses will be playing the Netherlands in the third-place game Saturday.
But U.S.-Sweden is predictable while U.S.-Netherlands is not.
So break out your orange, and root for the Dutch. Hup, Holland, hup!
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.