There are two ways to disturb world leader Spain, says Sweden's new national team captain Tony Gustavsson ahead of tonight's match in Málaga, the first in a double meeting with a return match in Gothenburg on Tuesday.
Either you drive full speed forward. Or you drive … full speed backwards.
Most of all a combination of the two.
What you can say is that there are two phases in the game that are interesting when it comes to what teams have done against Spain. One is the extremely high defensive game, really extremely high where you want to disturb their momentum, says Gustavsson, before he quickly continues:
But you can't do that in a whole match against Spain. They are too skilled, so what do you do then?
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You don't do what Sweden did the last time the countries met, just at La Rosaleda stadium in Málaga almost two years ago. Initially, the blue and yellow tactic worked almost perfectly. The high pressure and the quick transitions tore Spain's game apart and at halftime Sweden led 3-1. When the match was over, Spain was the winner with 5-3.
It was an incredibly positive feeling at first, we really hurt them. We threatened, we ran them down and then we collapsed completely, says Chelsea forward Johanna Rytting Kaneryd.
Sweden couldn't withstand the Spanish playing skill throughout the match.
So back to Tony Gustavsson's "So what do you do then?".
Two extremes
You back away. With the help of that tactic, both Germany and Italy managed to disturb Spain properly during the summer's European Championship.
Actually, there are only two extremes that work against Spain. One is if you press incredibly aggressively and high, or end up extremely low to close as Germany and Italy did during the European Championship, says Gustavsson.
For Johanna Rytting Kaneryd, there's almost nothing more boring than backing away. She stands for attacking desire, creativity, and everything that can give scoring opportunities. But to reach a Nations League final, she is willing to compromise.
We have been very clear with our game plan against Spain. We know that they are incredibly skilled, and I think it can be deadly to end up somewhere in between. So we must have a clear plan that if we go low, we go low, if we go high, we go high, says Rytting Kaneryd.
And it's also two matches, so you have to be smart about it too. If we can try to keep it tight, then a 0-0 result is not shameful either.
