Spain has won with goals from Salma Paralluelo and Olga Carmona in the match played against Sweden at the Eden Park Stadium in Auckland (New Zealand), in front of 43,217 spectators.
The Spanish team took the lead in the 81st minute with a goal from Salma Paralluelo, but the Swedish team tied shortly after (88th minute) with a goal from Rebecka.
When everything indicated that the game was headed for extra time, a goal by Olga Carmona in the 90th minute gave victory to Spain, who will play in the final of a World Cup that they had reached without ever winning a direct match in a major competition.
The footballers who played in this match and will go down in the history of Spanish football are Cata Coll; Ona Batlle, Irene Paredes, Laia Codina, Olga Carmona; Tere Abelleira, Aitana Bonmatí, Alexia Putellas; Mariona Caldentey, Alba Redondo and Jenni Hermoso (starting eleven); and Salma Paralluelo, Eva Navarro and Esther González, trained by coach Jorge Vilda.
“I trusted the team, I trusted to get to this moment, but, well, we had to fight for it, and from how the last few minutes have gone, full of emotion, the truth is that I’m very tired, with a bit of a headache, of all the accumulated tension”, has affirmed the defense and veteran of the selection, Irene Paredes.
His teammate, the goalkeeper Catalina Coll, stressed that “this team has not stopped believing, we like that they support us from Spain like this, because from here we feel it.” “Yes, yes, I already said it, that it was going to get fat and that’s how it has been”, she has celebrated.
“Once again a historic day, we hit a ball, we are in the final and it was what we were looking for. We felt happiness and joy. We went ahead again and they tied us again, and with our soul or with magic, with whatever the team got over it”, stressed the Spanish coach, Jorge Vilda.
The president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, recalled that “the strategic plan that we designed five years ago has dedicated a lot of money to women’s football because they deserved it, they have tremendous quality and with the right tools they show us that the Spanish women soccer players are capable of anything”.
“This is very important, because these women are living legends, they are going to be the image in which many girls look at themselves. We have been working with them for many years listening to what they needed,” he added, reports Efe.
The Spanish team will play the World Cup final next Sunday, August 20 at 12:00 Spanish time at the Stadium Australia in Sydney (Australia) against the winner of the other semifinal that will face Australia and England tomorrow Wednesday at 12 noon.
The qualification for the grand final confirms the great moment that women’s football is experiencing in Spain despite the controversy between a large group of players and the coach Jorge Vilda, who has left several of the best players out of the World Cup squad Spanish players.
The team reached this semifinal without ever having beaten Sweden, which had defeated Japan and the United States, winners of the last three World Cups, on their way to this World Cup.
Spain and Sweden (sixth and third in the world according to the FIFA ranking) had met eleven times with a balance of seven victories for the Nordic team and four draws.
The last meeting between both teams took place in Córdoba last October. The match ended in a one-goal tie.
