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.