Norway Displays Confidence
How confident was Norway Coach Per-Mathias Hogmo going into Sunday’s match against Russia at Foxboro Stadium?
Confident enough to leave Ann Kristin Aarones, the leading scorer in the 1995 Women’s World Championship on the bench. Confident enough to not send his fastest player, Dagny Mellgren, into the game until only 16 minutes remained.
Not that it made much difference.
Norway, the defending world champion, still had more than enough to defeat the Russians, 2-1, in front of 14,873 as it started out on a journey that, almost inevitably, will include a semifinal against China on July 4 in this same stadium.
After that comes a possible championship match at the Rose Bowl on July 10 against the U.S., but Hogmo isn’t looking that far ahead.
“We can’t beat the United States now,” he said, “because we meet Canada [next, Wednesday in Landover, Md.].
Meanwhile, he is taking comfort in the fact that Norway dominated a solid Russian team that scored one of the best goals of the tournament .
“I’m very pleased with our attacking play,” Hogmo said. “We created 19 good [scoring] chances after some good attacking play and good individual skills. It was more exciting than I like because I thought we could be a little bit better in our defensive play. Our back four were a little bit shaky today.”
Norway took the lead in the 28th minute when Marianne Pettersen headed the ball into the path of Brit Sandaune, who fired it past Russian goalkeeper Svetlana Petko from close range.
The Norwegians doubled their advantage in the 68th minute when Pettersen pounced on a mistake by Russian defender Natalia Karasseva, whose attempted clearance header fell directly at Pettersen’s feet. Pettersen buried the ball in the back of the net.
That should have been it, but Norway missed two other fine opportunities, Alexandra Svetlitzkaia and Tatiana Tcheverda both desperately scrambling to clear shots off the Russian goal line.
Russia’s goal came in the 78th minute when substitute Larissa Savina chased the ball to the end line, cut it back to Natalia Barbachina in front of the net and Barbachina, rather than taking a shot, wisely played it out for Galina Komarova to rocket into the net from 20 yards.
“I don’t think the match was close,” Hogmo said. “We were a lot better than Russia, but the Russian team is hard to beat. We have seen that before, so we knew this was going to be a very tough match.”
The next one will be a lot easier.
“Norway is a very experienced team,” said Russia Coach Yurii Bystritzkii. “It has been in the World Cup three times. What surprised us was the tempo of the game, the speed of play and Norway’s set plays.”
Sunday’s count at Foxboro brought total attendance for the tournament to 117,143 even before the evening doubleheader at the Rose Bowl and surpassed the total attendance of 112,000 at the Sweden ’95 championship.
