At the start of the year, Stina Blackstenius had had enough. She had been with Montpellier since the summer of 2017 but after a promising start she had fallen out of favour and decided to move home to Sweden and Linköping, the club she had left 18 months earlier.
For some it would have been an admission of failure, but not for Blackstenius. For the Sweden striker it was a chance to take stock and play regularly again with a World Cup coming up. The difficult time in France had been the first serious setback in a career that had seen her win the Under-19 European championship as the tournament’s leading scorer with six goals in 2015 and finish second in the Olympics the following year.
Back in Linköping the goals started to flow and with that her confidence returned. She was still questioned when the World Cup started and throughout the group stage. After the first three games in France she had not scored, taking her goal drought for the national side past a year.
But then came the release. In the 55th minute in the last-16 match against Canada she timed her run to perfection to connect with a delicious Kosovare Asllani through‑ball to score the only goal and send Sweden through to a meeting with Germany.
In that game she went one better by scoring the winner against opposition Sweden had lost to in their past 11 competitive meetings and not defeated for 24 years. Sweden had come from behind to do so – and the relief was clear afterwards.
“Of course it has been frustrating,” Blackstenius, who is preparing to take on the Netherlands in the semi-final on Wednesday, said. “I have really waited for this goal for a long time and it means a lot to me.
“The goal against Canada gave me a lot of confidence and I took that with me into the game against Germany. Throughout this I have continued to work hard with my runs. I don’t think I would have even dreamt about standing here talking about a World Cup semi-final [when things were tough at Montpellier] but maybe it was somewhere in the background. I have had a feeling that we had something special going with this team.”
Before the World Cup Blackstenius said that being back in Sweden had made her feel more at ease. “My confidence wasn’t very good when I came back from France so I have had to work quite a lot on that. The fact that I was playing regularly at Linköping has meant a huge amount.
“But I have also managed to focus on the things I know I am good at and I have kept repeating them; things I feel comfortable about.”
Blackstenius started playing football with her older brother, Oscar, in a team managed by her father, Magnus, but it was not until she was 15 that she decided to focus on the sport. Until then she had also played a lot of handball but after a season scoring 38 goals for Vadstena in the third division she joined Linköping in the top flight in 2013.
She has always been a fighter, working hard with her tireless running. Throughout her spell without scoring for Sweden she has had the backing of the coach, Peter Gerhardsson.
Blackstenius did not feature in the second group game against Thailand, with Anna Anvegård playing up front, but was back in the starting XI against the USA and has not looked back.
Against the Netherlands she is certain to start and Sweden will rely on her and Sofia Jakobsson to trouble a shaky defence with their long and difficult-to-track runs. Sweden will be without the suspended Fridolina Rolfö and will miss the Wolfsburg player’s aggressiveness down the left. Lina Hurtig is expected to replace her.
Gerhardsson has been cautiously optimistic about the game against what he calls his “favourite team”. “When I was 15 I watched the Netherlands against Germany and this is one of my best football experiences,” he said on Monday. “I was fascinated by Dutch football.”
Gerhardsson was appointed Sweden coach after the 2017 Euros in the Netherlands, a tournament the hosts won. “That final [a 4-2 win against Denmark] and the football they played is very close to the football we believe in,” he said. “It is going to be a great semi-final and it is going to be fun to see if we can beat one of my favourite countries when it comes to football, both when it comes to the men’s team and the women’s team.”
If Sweden are to have a chance, Blackstenius will surely play a key role. She is back among the goals and do not want to stop now. The Netherlands have been warned.
