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Paint. Party. Rejection. Frustration.
Paint. Party. Rejection. Frustration.
Paint. Party. Rejection. Frustration.
Stina Blackstenius luckily his birthday is in february. Maybe by then, he will dare to enjoy moments of happiness again without the slightest suspicion that someone will come and blow out the candles in front of his nose.
The European Championships have so far tested the Swede’s mental endurance. There have been successes, there is even one goal in the statistics. The only thing is that there are so many of them that Blackstenius’s name should be at the very top of the paint market.
– I have been careless because I have been on the wrong side so many times. However, it is important to be able to try and look for places. In the final games, you should not give up, Blackstenius formulated in the middle of the group stage SVT’s (you switch to another service) by.
Video checks have been a thorn in the attackers’ side in these games. They have hated no one so much as Blackstenius. Goal after goal has been erased from the record, sometimes by a hair’s breadth.
However, success cannot be measured by the goal column alone. Blackstenius has said it repeatedly. Sweden’s coaching, on the other hand, has shown its full confidence by keeping him tenaciously in his place in the lineup despite the wide material.
The view is supported by Urheilu’s expert Timo Furuholman ex-striker who has scored goals for years.
– In such a short tournament, it is important if you get such a good feeling of unstoppability and invincibility. It has now been hindered by abandoned goals and self-sacrificing defending. It’s been up to Peek, so that doesn’t mean he can’t be the decisive player. A good striker picks himself up from such adversity regardless, says Furuholm.
Blackstenius’s balloon has been blown out of the yard a rare number of times. Still, he has been able to help his team to the top four. The European Championship final is waiting around the corner, but first you should be able to punish the country to which he was recently acquired with fanfare thanks to his exceptional goalscoring.
“He never realized how good he was”
Blackstenius is a second-generation soccer player. Sometimes it means that the sport has been played since childhood, or at the latest at the age of a few years, the player himself has started to strive for his parent’s achievements.
In this case, those clichés don’t apply. Blackstenius was well into his teens, and still didn’t particularly care about professional football. His story lacks the oversized jerseys of the old legends or the grainy VHS tapes that were endlessly played at home.
Football was a game among others – a more important hobby for the older brother, in whose training Blackstenius, who is three years younger, was at the side of his coach-father. The coaches, already convinced of his soccer abilities, wanted him to join the regional camp, but Blackstenius played mainly for fun.
If it wasn’t fun, you didn’t play – unless something else was invented that would be fun. Junior coach Michael Westerberg later recalled that Blackstenius agreed to go along when the whole team was taken to McDonald’s after practice.
In a way, Blackstenius ended up becoming a professional soccer player because the opportunity happened to present itself. The hobby of handball remained with him until he was 17 years old and fell off the calendar only when Linköping, the Swedish premier league, offered a contract.
Instead of the girls’ series, Blackstenius had already jumped into women’s games at the age of 15. A year later, 38 goals were scored in 16 matches, which brought the goal exchange victory. In his wildest season, he scored a total of 99 goals in all competitions.
The Swedish junior national team made him an unstoppable striker. In 49 international matches, he scored 50 goals. Coached Spain in these games Jorge Vilda was ready to throw his gloves on the counter in 2016, when Blackstenius had scored two goals in the Spanish net at the under-19 European Championships.
– You can’t keep a player like that at bay for 90 minutes. Like playing Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi’s against the team. If one player is so much better than others, he cannot be stopped, Vilda said Fifa (you switch to another service)by.
Swedish handball’s loss has been international football’s gain. As a young sporting promise, Blackstenius had a path to the top in both.
It was not far from the fact that a pair of radars would have also come from the next room, because Blackstenius’ half-sister is a handball player by profession. Nina Koppang is the Swedish champion and even made it to the national team for the first time last year.
Blackstenius, on the other hand, was always multi-talented. Generally athletic. Both fast and strong, and the ball obeyed both hand and foot. The girl, who is also enthusiastic about athletics, ran to the 60-meter winner in her first races in running shoes, when everyone around her had decent spikes on their feet.
All those features have remained to help on football fields as well. Especially the speed, which has surprised every defense that has come up against the EC green at least once so far.
– The greatest strength is versatility. He is moderately big and moves really strongly when standing up. He constantly reads the game so that his nose points in the right direction, and is able to challenge the defense with that, says Furuholm.
There may also be a certain aggressiveness and strength in handball. Blackstenius is an excellent main player. In the Swedish team Kosovare Asllani knows how to give dangerous balls from free kicks, for example, Blackstenius, on the other hand, gets his own head between them sooner or later with a high percentage.
– In the penalty area, he is able to create scoring opportunities for himself with the use of his body and with a good enough first touch, and quickly gets a foot free with small movements. He represents a disappearing resource, i.e. a more traditional striker. Then the strengths consist of a mixture of good target play, standing up, and hard box attacking, Furuholm adds.
The Swedes were able to enjoy Blackstenius’ moves on the fields of their home country for a long time, because there was no rush to go elsewhere. In 2016, fresh off the championship, he left for France, but the language barrier, injury concerns and the French’s obsessive desire to get more muscle mass for the fast and skilled player left a bitter taste in the trip.
So the attacker returned to Sweden. Two more effective seasons spawned a goal exchange win last year and new inquiries about when the top talent would finally leave for more lucrative fields.
– Thoughts crept into my mind that I wouldn’t be able to manage abroad. However, I have now learned that the decisive things are the environment, culture and enjoyment even outside of football. Many things have to be taken into account, Blackstenius told Göterborgs-Posten in the summer.
The transfer took place in January, when Blackstenius, courting the competition of the best clubs in England, chose Arsenal. After the lesson received from French Montpellier, the Swedish coaching of the London club certainly didn’t hurt at least.
– I approached this in a completely different way. This is what I always wanted. I believed in the whole decision. I felt that now I am ready, Blackstenius continued.
In the spring season of the English Super League, he managed to score six goals in 11 matches and form one of the most dangerous radar pairs in Europe. Vivianne Miedeman with. The jump to the physical series was successful even in the middle of the season.
A woman of important goals
In these games, the scoring flow has been interrupted, but doubt has plagued Blackstenius before.
By the age of 26, he is already an experienced player, a veteran with almost a hundred international matches. In these games, he is able to handle disappointments better, because the previous difficulties have strengthened him.
As the 2019 World Cup progressed from the group stage to the playoffs, more than a year had passed since the last national team goal, and that fact had not gone unnoticed. The confidence was rewarded when Blackstenius’ strike in the quarter-final against Germany took Sweden into the top four.
– The attacker basically has a great, burning need to score goals. There is always a little pressure inside and the need to release it. It requires goals. In that sense, he has had an interesting tournament. A lot has been left to be corrected when it has been about a VAR rejection of a couple of centimeters or a defender cleaning up from the goal line, says Timo Furuholm.
Four goals scored, three disallowed. The bag of candy is constantly torn from the hand, when there are only strammacks left, but Blackstenius has not been left behind. He also scored his only goal of the tournament in extra time against Portugal after two VAR rejections.
– I try to approach them in such a way that I have reached places and scored goals from them. I’ve always had a tendency to be right on the edge and when VAR is in use, you have to pay a little for it, Blackstenius said for SVT (you switch to another service) on the weekend.
The pieces finally fell into place in the only accepted goal, where Blackstenius was launching an attack in Sweden’s own half of the field.
Three years ago at the World Championships, Blackstenius frankly admitted that the dry season cannot be completely excluded from thoughts. In the light of history, however, she is a woman of important goals and big games.
The one who won the under-19 European Championship for Sweden with his two final goals.
The one who took Sweden to the Under-20 World Cup by scoring 20 goals in ten qualifying matches.
The one who at the Rio Olympics scored against the superstars of the United States and helped Sweden advance, and scored his country’s only goal in the final.
The one who in the Tokyo Olympics scored three goals in three matches in the group stage, the winning goal in the quarter-finals and his country’s only goal in the final.
The one on whom Sweden still dares to place its hopes in the European Championship semi-finals, even though the opponent is England, who are roaring in the ecstasy of their home games.
Anticipating that, Blackstenius has already had time to ask in these games what has made him so good when the pressure is the hardest. It has been difficult for the attacker to answer that.
Sweden will meet England in the semi-final of the European Championship on Tuesday from 22:00. The live broadcast of the match starts at 21:15 on TV2, Areena and the app. Bet on the opening goal scorer of the match in Futistietäjä and win a technical ball!