Sembrant's final performance will be Tuesday's return match for third place in the Nations League, at 3 Arena in Stockholm. France has a 2-1 lead after the meeting in Reims on Friday.
One international match left, how does it feel?
God, it's so powerful when you say it like that. This national team has been my whole life, my whole adult life. I expect, and am prepared for, a lot of emotions, says Linda Sembrant.
She made her senior national team debut 17 years ago. If she gets playing time against France, she will have 160 international caps. For much of that time, she has been a key defender and has helped the national team to four championship medals: Olympic silver in 2016, World Cup bronze in 2011, 2019 and 2023 (she missed the Olympic silver in 2021 due to injury).
Partner in crime: Lisa Dahlkvist
Along the way, she has found friends for life. In recent years, she has been closest to Caroline Seger on the national team, who retired in 2023. Before that, it was Lisa Dahlkvist who was the gunner above others.
On Friday, Dahlkvist wrote emotionally on Instagram, about how Sembrant is "the player I've looked up to, laughed with the most, been the angriest at, had as my best roommate, competed the hardest and had the most fun with, cried with and celebrated with."
What she wrote was so perfectly accurate about how we have been. I played my first ten years in the national team with her and shared a room. We have so many great memories. Football has given me so much, it's hard to describe, says Sembrant.
Her football skills will be missed. But also the way in which she always lifted the spirits of her national team mates, not infrequently through various "spex".
Like when she and Dahlkvist celebrated the World Cup bronze medal in Germany in 2011 so hard that they ended up mistaking a police car for a taxi – but still managed to get a ride back to the hotel.
Jumped into a fir tree
Or like when she and the other national team players thanked Caroline Seger last winter, wearing blonde "Seger wigs".
It's getting boring (in the national team), she will be incredibly missed. She's a joy, she gives so much energy. And her jokes... you laugh so much at her because she's such a funny person, says national team teammate Fridolina Rolfö.
And ends with a typical anecdote for "Sempan":
So, just before I went to this interview, she showed me a clip. When we were going to celebrate Seger, we had wigs and stuff and it was a Christmas party, we had drunk some alcohol and were on our way home. And then there's a Christmas tree standing on Stureplan. So she jumps into the Christmas tree and attaches herself to the trunk. She was stuck there, with the wig hanging behind.
But she fell pretty quickly after that.
Sweden–France kicks off at 7:00 PM.
