Semi-Final

Serbia – Sweden 25:27 (10:13)

In the end, Sweden trembled but won

 

The final of this Women´s Junior World Championship is perfect: After Sweden won the second semifinal of this tournament in Ostrava against Serbia with 27:25, the Scandinavians are looking forward to the final against France on Saturday. Serbia still have the chance to win a medal. Precondition for this success will be a victory in the bronze medal-match against Hungary.

 

Sweden had a fabulous start into this match and led with 4:0 after six minutes. The Serbian coach Zoran Valdevit reacted immediately and took his first team time-out after the one sides starting period. For the next 15 minutes Serbia was back in the match and shortened the backlog (4:6, 5:8). But then Sweden came to their first five-goal-lead (10:5 after 23 minutes). The Scandinavians played more aggressive in defense than their contributor and had more penetrating power in the attack up to then. But just a short period of a lack in concentration gave Serbia the chance to come back again (10:12, 29.). But with their last score a few seconds before break Sweden extended their lead again to 13:10.

 

In the beginning of the second half Sweden once again had the much better start. With five goals in the first four and a half minutes „Team Tre Krona” was in lead with 18:10, and later with 20:11. The Serbs were dismayed in the face of this false start. The question was whether they were able to recover from this setback and be dangerous to their contributor, who had already won the Youth WCh in the Dominican Republic two years ago. The answer was „Yes”, although Serbia did not win the match. But they came up in the middle of the second period, when they improved the result from 12:21 first to 17:22 and then to 20:24, 23:26 and 25:27. With thinking of having won the match already, Sweden started to lose concentration, which gave Serbia the chance to catch up and the match became thrilling to the end. But when Serbia missed a penalty one minute before the end, the match was decided.

 

„My head is empty after this match”, said Camilla Eriksson, head coach of Sweden. „We led this match two times, but we always let Serbia come back. But we played a very good defense today. That´s why we won.” Best scorer of this match was Natalija Vasic (Serbia) with seven goals.