Title dream lives on after 4-1 win against Sweden

The German Women’s national team have taken another step towards their third title at the World Cup in Canada. Silvia Neid's side prevailed 4-1 in their prestigious round of 16 tie against Sweden, and they will now face either France or South Korea in the quarterfinals on Friday (22:00 CEST).

The two-time World Champions and eight-time European Champions were the superior side in front of 22,486 spectators at the sold-out Lansdowne Stadium in Ottawa, with the outstanding Anja Mittag opening the scoring, followed by a brace from Celia Sasic, while Dzsenifer Marozsan rounded off the scoring shortly before the end. Both Mittag and Sasic now have five goals from four games at the tournament. Linda Sembrant scored a late consolation goal for the underwhelming Swedish side.

“We are delighted that we have knocked this difficult side out of the tournament,” head coach Silvia Neid told ZDF. “You don’t score four goals against Sweden every day, so we deserve to be in the quarterfinals. It was a very important game, maybe a key game.” Goalscorer Mittag also spoke of a “deserved” victory: “We worked hard and covered a lot of ground.”

For the first knockout game, Neid chose to revert to the same starting eleven that had beaten Cote d’Ivoire 10-0 in the opening game. That meant that Sweden’s bane, Dzsenifer Marozsan, had to start the game from the bench. The 23-year-old had previously scored the winning goal in Germany’s 1-0 semi-final win over the Scandinavians at the European Championship in 2013.

DFB Women dominate from start

Germany had a plan to impose their game on the Swedes from the kick-off, and they could’ve been 2-0 up after only two minutes. Only 20 seconds into the game, Alexandra Popp was found unmarked in the box, and Simone Laudehr shot moments later directly at keeper Hedvig Lindahl.

Melanie Leupolz also failed to finish off a counterattack from twelve yards in the 13th minute. Mittag went one better, however, when she stole the ball in midfield and scored from the edge of the box after a one-two with Sasic. A foul on Mittag by Amanda Ilestedt gave Sasic the chance to double the lead from the penalty spot, which she did, placing her penalty into the bottom right corner. The only piece of bad news came for central defender Saskia Bartusiak, who picked up her second yellow of the tournament for a foul on Sofia Jakobsson, and she will now miss the quarterfinal match.

Marozsan settles the matter

The DFB-Team stuck to their strategy after the break and exerted further pressure on Sweden. Like in their three group games, where they contested three draws, the Scandinavian outfit could only muster a few convincing attacks. And when Pia Sundhage’s team came close to the German goal, captain Nadine Angerer was on hand to deny them.

Although Neid’s team took their foot off the accelerator, they were still more likely to get a third goal than Sweden to get their first. Lindahl was needed again in the 64th minute to make a fingertip save from Lena Goeßling’s long-range effort. Five minutes later, Popp came close again when her attempt from a narrow angle rolled across the goal to safety. Sasic seemingly put the game to bed with her second goal of the match when she headed home in the 78th minute.

But things then got interesting again. Sweden reduced the deficit with a Linda Sembrant header in the 82nd minute, before Angerer denied Sofia Jakobsson one-on-one. Substitute Marozsan made the score 4-1 in the 88th minute though to put the game beyond doubt.