When Sweden’s handball ladies play the quarter-final against Germany in Herning, Denmark, the hunt for the first WC medal begins in earnest. After being far from the top of the world for many years, the “smiling national team” has slowly but surely approached the podium in the global championships. In the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, they lost the bronze medal match against Norway and in the World Cup the same year, they finished fifth.
Sweden has qualified for eleven of the last twelve global championships. Before Beijing 2008, they had not participated in any Olympics and between 1997 and 2007 only participated in one of six World Cups, in Italy in 2001.
It was then that the term “The smiling national team” was coined. Sweden won all five games in the group stage and the round of 16 against the Netherlands before it came to an end in the quarter-finals.
That WC tournament also meant a media breakthrough as it was the first time that TV4 broadcast the matches from a women’s handball championship.
Tina Flognman and Katarina Arfwidsson during the WC match against Angola in Italian Merano 2001. Photo: Björn Lindgren/Bildbyrån
If you can believe Annika Wiel Hvannberg, Radiosport’s expert commentator, however, began the great sporting transformation with a training camp on the Danish island of Funen in 2005. At that time, her surname was Wiel Fredén and she was a newly-minted national team player.
That’s when Ulf Schefvert, after a long time as a men’s coach in Sweden and abroad, took over as the women’s national team captain. Wiel Hvannberg describes a man in a suit with a teaching background who came to the national team gathering with a completely different training philosophy and who had high demands.
– Of course there were requirements before, but it wasn’t the kind of requirement that we should pass physical tests. We started training much harder, much more running and strength. “If you’re going to be something, then you’ll have to run the hell out of it,” he sounded. Then he worked with what is usually called the proximal development zone. He let us face opponents that we could just beat. In this way, we gained self-confidence that we hadn’t had before, she says and continues:
– Right then we didn’t think much about it, you just did as he said, but in hindsight at least I see it as a good educational example of how to get a team to get better, says Wiel Hvannberg, who made 120 international appearances .
Confederation captain Ulf Schefvert during European Championship 2006. Photo: Emil Malmborg/Bildbyrån
Three years later, Sweden qualified for the Olympics for the first time and in 2010 came the first championship medal, in the EC. Another of the success factors was that the handball ladies gained access to increased support from the Swedish Olympic Committee through the Olympic promotion.
During the 1990s the Swedish men’s national team experienced an enormous wave of success under the leadership of national team captain Bengt Johansson. Wiel Hvannberg remembers how the ladies during her first time in the national team played in B-halls for a few hundred people. After the first successes internationally, the women’s national team began to make demands on the Swedish Handball Association for increased gender equality.
– It is clear that they reflected on the fact that the boys had better compensation from the union. We protested, but got the answer “that’s how it’s always been”. But somewhere it turned around, because we had players who worked so that the ladies would get the same conditions and as we also performed with the European Championship medal in 2010, the association had to change its mind, says Wiel Hvannberg.
Annika Wiel Hvannberg is an expert commentator on Radiosport during this year’s WC. Photo: Mathias Bergeld/Bildbyrån
She wishes she could have been on the pitch when 10,561 spectators carried the national team forward in the World Cup match against Hungary. Instead, Annika Wiel Hvannberg is content to sit in the stands and comment.
In 2006, she played her first championship, the EC in Sweden. In the premiere against Ukraine, not even a third of the almost 8,000 seats at Hovet in Stockholm were filled with spectators.
– That now more than 10,000 people come and watch the women’s national team, it’s absolutely fantastic, she says.
The national team veteran Nathalie Hagman agrees. Since her national team debut in 2009, she has followed the development and the growing interest closely. The opening part of the WC with a party atmosphere and well-filled stands will be an unforgettable memory.
– I think it’s great fun that we ladies get attention for the work we do. There was a time when some were a little anti to women’s sports, but success generates interest and when people start going to the games, others feel that they also want to be a part of it, says Hagman.
Nathalie Hagman is Sweden’s top scorer so far in this year’s WC with 33 goals in six matches. Photo: Adam Ihse/TT
Swedish women’s handball has come a long way, but the WC medal is missing and it does not have the same high status as in Norway. Hagman believes that if the last step is to be taken, there must be better financial conditions for playing in the top league at home.
– There are many of us who move abroad early and that is good for the national team, but in order to create greater breadth, one wishes that there could be an opportunity for younger players to only devote themselves to handball full-time. Today, the financial conditions do not really exist, says Hagman.
Behind handball’s increased popularity is also a conscious strategy from the Swedish Handball Association, which has made it a business idea to organize major championships.
2023 is a year with the WC for both women and men on home soil, championships that not only create increased interest. The men’s WC in January this year went with a profit of SEK 25 million after tax. A total of around 50,000 spectators at the Swedish matches in Gothenburg during the Women’s World Cup will bring more bang for the buck.
Over 10,000 spectators watched Sweden’s group stage match against Hungary last Saturday. Photo: Michael Erichsen/Bildbyrån
Confederation captain Tomas Axnér has a long background in handball both as a player, coach and expert commentator on television. He believes that the increased interest in the women’s national team is synonymous with the progress of women’s sports overall.
– Female Swedish athletes perform at an extremely high level in general. We have had great success, not least within our national skiing and soccer teams. When it comes to handball, I think it helps that the girls are open to the media, which makes them easy to like, says Axnér.
On Wednesday it applies to Germany in the classic arena Boxen in Herning.
Victory in the quarter-finals would mean that Sweden plays for the medals and a podium place would be another milestone in the development of the women’s national team.
Read more: Blohm warns Germany: “Better than the results”
2023-12-12 17:32:10
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