Sweden limber up for Belgium with one eye on semi-final against England

It is a measure of Sweden’s growing confidence and form that England’s dramatic progress to the semi-finals of Euro 2022 should be regarded as an enticing rather than intimidating prospect. Coach Peter Gerhardsson was bullish about the possibility of confronting the host nation at Bramall Lane next Tuesday.

“I decided to stay in my room to watch the game and I thought it was a really good game of football,” the Sweden coach said of the competition’s first quarter-final. “I wasn’t thinking about England, only the game, but I did think to myself: ‘I would like to play this team and I would prefer to play them here in England’. But I’ll have to revisit that after Belgium.”

Gerhardsson’s belief was not a sign of complacency ahead of Sweden’s quarter-final against Belgium on Friday. Far from it. “We haven’t gone through so it’s nothing we are thinking about at the moment,” he said, when asked about England having two more days’ rest than their semi-final opponents. The expectation is that Sweden will join Sarina Wiegman’s side in Sheffield next week, however, and that brings its own complications.

As Everton’s Nathalie Björn said: “We have a lot of full-time professionals in our squad and we receive a lot of pressure because of that. But we have to respect Belgium because all the teams in the quarter-finals are good. Belgium’s attack impresses me and their result against France (a 2-1 defeat) was very impressive. We have had trouble in the past unlocking defences that sit deep but we have looked at a lot of clips and there are some things in their defence that we can try to exploit tomorrow.”

Belgium surprised many, perhaps even themselves, by reaching the quarter-finals for the first time in their history when pipping