PHOTO: Bildbyrån
Sweden has impressed during the football World Cup.
Unexpected criticism is then directed at Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“I’m curious as to whether Zlatan has followed the WC,” writes an SVD columnist.
The Swedish women’s soccer team has impressed this summer and reached the fourth consecutive semi-final in a major championship. But unfortunately the World Cup final dream was crushed on Tuesday morning after a heavy loss against Spain with 1-2.
Sweden’s success
Nevertheless, the Swedes deserve to be praised for their fine efforts in the championship. Millions of Swedes have followed their progress in Australia and New Zealand during the summer and we have all been drawn into the football fever when they lined up blue-yellow victories.
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But in the middle of the championship, unexpected criticism is now being directed at Zlatan Ibrahimovic for his old statement from 2013 when he said: “The ladies can get a bike with my autograph and it will be fine”. In a column in Svenska Dagbladet, the writer reminds Elaf Ali again about the unknown words.
“Wonder if Zlatan still thinks ‘the ladies can get a bike’ with his autograph on it?”, she writes in her column.
“Not to compare with the Swedish men, but the last time they made it to the semi-finals was in the last millennium”.
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The Zlatan criticism
The Swedish women’s national team has broken new ground and taken great strides since 2013. Today, they are important role models for young girls in the country, and interest has grown enormously in our blue-and-yellow heroes who belong to the absolute top of the world.
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But there is still a long way to go to get a more equal football for men and women. And once again, criticism is directed at Zlatan.
“I am curious as to whether Zlatan has followed the WC. If he were to express himself differently today. Scrolling Instagram I read comments under the official Fifa account like ‘they are so slow’. There are few sports where women’s performance is compared to men’s as much as in football. I am not sure what it is due to,” writes the SvD columnist further.
“We don’t think Florence Griffith Joyner’s 100m world record is slow because it’s not as fast as Usain Bolt’s. The logical thing would be to compare our soccer ladies with other women’s national teams in the world, and right now we are ranked top three in the world and have knocked out the world number one USA during the current championship”.
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Elaf Ali really wants to emphasize how important it is with the success of our Swedish women’s footballers on the international stage and how much it means.
“The hero who took us to the quarter-finals is called Zecira Musovic. I’m not going to hide that I’m glad she looks the way she does and has her name. It matters that someone like Musovic is celebrated as a person who represents and fights for Sweden. Even if she should not have to take responsibility for anything other than the network she has behind her, it is important. Because young people reflect in her and to broaden the image, which apparently is not yet broad enough, of a person with a foreign background in Sweden,” she writes in her column.
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