Häcken and Hammarby are fighting at the top of the women’s league and on Tuesday the teams will meet in the final of the Swedish Cup. The final is played with Hammarby as the home team at Tele2 arena and over 15,000 tickets have been sold for the match.
During Sunday morning, Häcken did the last training before leaving for Stockholm, and then crowd noise and Hammarby rhymes streamed from Bravida arena’s speakers.
– There were definitely a few speakers with Hammarby sound to get a little feeling right now. There will be a slightly different sound level and a different feeling when communicating on the pitch. It was probably loud around Bravida this morning, says Häcken coach Robert Vilahamn.
It was Vilahamn’s idea to raise the volume and play the opponents’ chants during training.
– You see some big teams that have done that abroad and I thought there was nothing to lose by that. It probably doesn’t have a big meaning, but all the little things you can do to prepare the players are good.
How did the players react to it?
– You notice that it was more difficult to communicate, of course, but the players were very focused.
“A lot of mental preparation”
Despite the fact that it is a cup final in front of a large crowd at Tele2 Arena, against the second place in the women’s Swedish table, Vilahamn says that it is only this weekend that the team started talking about Tuesday’s match.
– We haven’t talked about the final before. We had an important match last Friday against Kristianstad, so it was actually today that we started to address this. It’s very tactical how we’re going to play, but we faced them (Hammarby) recently so we have a pretty good idea. Now it’s time to prepare for Tele2, it’s a different artificial turf, a different arena and a title at stake, so now it’s a lot of mental preparation. It’s not often you get this type of match so it’s also about enjoying and taking advantage of it.
On Monday morning, the team goes to Stockholm and later in the day the last training session before the final takes place, at the match arena Tele2. Then nothing will be played from the speakers.
– Tomorrow it’s just a matter of taking in the arena and the artificial grass and the feeling, have a good match preparation training. That’s how we do it when we play the Champions League as well, training in the arena the day before to get a feel for the environment, says Robert Vilahamn.
Both Elin Rubensson and Anna Anvegård missed Friday’s match against Kristianstad due to injuries, but Robert Vilahamn has hopes that the national team-merited duo will be able to participate in Tuesday’s cup final
– Both were involved and trained most of the time (on Sunday), so it was a good sign, he says.
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2023-06-04 11:32:47
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