Before the last group game round, Iceland was in second place, they met the clear group winner France in the last match. In the second match, Italy-Belgium, both teams hoped for a win for themselves, while Iceland did not take three points.
It went record fast when France took the lead against Iceland. 43 seconds into the match, Melvine Malard made it 1-0. The goal is the fastest in a European Championship group game for women. Here and there, Iceland, Belgium and Italy stood on the same points, with the advantage for Belgium who had a better goal difference.
The situation changed, more in Belgium’s favor, when at the beginning of the second half they took the lead against Italy through Tinne De Caigny.
1-0 stood the whole match through, just as it did between France and Iceland. Until the last second, when Iceland was awarded a penalty after a long VAR review. The penalty was smashed in by Dagny Brynjarsdottir to 1-1. But Iceland had to win, which they did not have time for when the referee blew off right after the equalizer.
With that, it was Belgium who finished in second place and will face Sweden in the quarterfinals.
A match Sweden should win easily according to SVT’s expert Nazanin Vaseghpanah.
– Sweden will be big favorites and they will be missing Belgium. You can see that they are happy to have won this match and made it to the quarter finals. They are strong defensively and have a good counterattack but I think they will have a hard time against Sweden, says Vaseghpanah who is mainly worried about is team captain Tessa Wullaert.
– She is the player who seeks a lot of ball and is responsible for the performances and also comes to many endings herself. You want to use her very much in the game so it is definitely a player we have to watch out for, says Vaseghpanah.
Expert colleague Daniel Nannskog is more worried about Janice Cayman:
– I think she has a good right foot and is good at taking these deep deep runs from midfield.
The quarter final will be played on Friday 22 July with a kick-off at 21.00 and will be broadcast on SVT.
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