8 maj 2011, Tyresövallen, Tyresö
Weather: Sunny, warm, beautiful
Summary: Sunshine, pretty goals, pretty defending, ugly defending, a near fight, a red card, and the 76th vexes me. Best game of the season so far. 1-2 (1-2)Tyresövallen is probably the least easily-accessible stadium I've been too. A car is not actually required to get there, but the journey is made much easier when someone offers to drive there. The venue itself I've already covered, so now it's time to talk about the match proper.
The stands are crowded, and finding a seat looks like trouble until one of our little group boldly goes into the seating entrance marked 'VIP'. Seats are in short supply today; eventually the attendance will be announced at 2820, a record for the year so far, and there are many people standing by the rails and sidelines. We manage to squeeze into some molded plastic chairs just as everybody around us stands up to cheer, as Tyresö's Josefin Öqvist has scored in the 5th minute. The enormous electric sign behind the goal lights up and announcing "MÅL!" in huge yellow and red letters, as if we might not have noticed the roar of a couple thousand fans packed together like pickled herrings in a tin. 1-0 to the home team. The crowd has reason to continue to be noisy; first there's a loud murmur of approval as Tyresö defends an LdB attack in the 9th minute, then angry muttering six minutes later as a whistle blows against the home team, then a series of sharp collective intakes of breath as LdB forward Manon Melis shoots from the right side. The shot is saved but the rebound goes back to an LdB player, who misses, and then Tyresö's defense clears the ball desperately but into the center. In retrospect, the series is a harbinger of things to come.
In the 21st minute Tyresö's Öqvist again shows her speed as she dashes past the LdB defense and beats them to a long ball, which she unfortunately cannot hold onto. But the effort is appreciated and a chant of "Ty-re-sö! (clap clap clap)" starts up among the flag-waving crowd in the stands opposite. Our side of the stands, perhaps generally more sober, nevertheless respond in kind, and add a foot stomp to each clap. A minute after it starts, the chanting stops abruptly, as LdB's Melis runs up the left, speeding past what seems like all of Tyresö's defenders, and shoots across the goal, beating Tyresö's keeper Carola Söberg to the right corner. 1-1 and the crowd is disappointed, but the goal was clearly well-deserved. 
There's a gap in my notes between that goal in the 27th and minute 35; the play, which has been at a fine high tempo all along, is losing a bit of focus. LdB's Australian player Heather Garriock lies on the field, injured, and the two teams take the opportunity to rehydrate as she is replaced by Elin Rubensson. Play upon returning is a little more crisp, with some more nice moves by Öqvist, but the next notable thing to happen is that LdB's Nilla Fischer collides with someone not too far from Tyresö's penalty box; there's a little scuffle, and Fischer comes out the winner of a foul, much to the outrage of the fans, who are quite sure that she is the offender not the victim. LdB lines up the free kick carefully. The ball is crossed in almost perfectly, just out of the goalkeeper's easy reach, but just over the scrum of players running on to the ball. Tyresö's keeper comes out and collides with two LdB players who are attempting to head the ball, and the ball goes into the net. Even on replays it's hard to see what really happened here, but Linda Sembrandt is announced as the goalscorer although Fischer seems to have gotten her head to it as well. In either case it's now 1-2. Tyresö looks considerably more deflated after this goal than after the first one against them, and their shoulders droop. The extra time to be added to the half is announced. A small girl behind us asks her father how much time is left. "Two more minutes in this half," he answers. "How many halves are there?" she asks. Halftime entertainment is a combination skill event and lottery, in which you buy a tennis ball with a unique number, and throw it from the sideline to the center circle. Closest to dead center wins. Thumpy music plays. One of our hejarklack comes back from the refreshment stand bearing a bulle and ostbågar, a couple of snacks that strike me as very Swedish.
The sun has dipped below the roof of the stands, and now, looking at the scoreboard toward the west goal, we're looking directly into the sunlight. The half starts brightly for the home team, as forward Madelaine Edlund earns a chance through good individual work but then blows the shot high and wide. "Oj!" says the crowd. Tyresö is pressing hard, and LdB's Icelandic forward Sara Björk Gunnarsdottir is the first to snap. She clips the feet of Tyresö's Katrin Schmidt as the latter runs past her, and adds a push for good measure. The crowd yells "Oj!" but this time meaning it in outrage rather than disappointment. Yellow card to Björk Gunnarsdottir, and it feels like there might be further chippy behavior in the game.
In the 55th minute LdB's Linda Forsberg intercepts a pass deep in her own territory, and sends a very very long ball forward. Tyresö captain Johanna Frisk seems to have it covered, but then loses her concentration for a split second and makes a terrible one-touch back pass to her keeper Söberg, perhaps not seeing that LdB's Melis is right on her heels. Melis springs forward on the ball and is now in a one-on-one with keeper Söberg at a very favorable angle. Söberg takes it calmly, advancing with a baby step or two, and standing up to Melis, who shoots low and to the far post. Söberg falls on her butt and makes a fantastic save with her left foot. The TV commentators alternately praise Söberg's save, and say that Melis waited too long, but they both agree that it was sloppy play that started this whole thing. ("Frisk! Frisk, Frisk, Frisk," one commentator intones.) But at least she learns: the next time a long ball comes forward to Melis, she doesn't even attempt to play it, but instead gets goalside of it immediately and defends against Melis well, and makes two very good defensive plays against Melis within the next five minutes.
In the 68th, Tyresö's Brazilian talent, Elaine Moura, is running up the right side, and gets bumped twice by Björk Gunnarsdottir, and on the second one she falls down, whipping her legs around, her spikes grazing the back of Björk Gunnarsdottir's jersey. Björk Gunnarsdottir looks down and yells something at her as she gets up; the two face each other like prizefighters. Björk Gunnarsdottir leans her shoulder in, and gives Elaine a dig with her elbow, as Elaine advances, muttering. This is happening practically right in front of us, and the crowd is screaming. Review of the video shows that Björk Gunnarsdottir did in fact have her hand on the scruff of Elaine's neck on the second bump; Elaine for her part probably exaggerated her fall; both were provocative thereafter. Free kick to Tyresö, which less than a minute later has turned into a corner kick to LdB, which Söberg does well to punch away. 
There are about 20 minutes left in the game, and Tyresö are looking hurried and tired and they aren't quite clicking together as they were previously. In the 76th minute, Tyresö makes a substitution, Sofie Persson in for Jennifer Egelryd. Things should not be allowed to happen in the 76th minute, when poor foreigners are trying to keep notes, as the word 'seventy-sixth' (sjuttio-sjätte) is difficult to either hear or pronounce correctly if you are a not native speaker. A couple minutes later Nilla Fischer goes out, with a foot injury, and is replaced by Emma Wilhelmsson. In the 81st, LdB's Annika Kukkonen earns her team's second yellow by pushing down Persson, which the stadium announcer incorrectly identifies as the game's first, which the home crowd is grumpy enough to mutter about and a few people shout corrections. Earlier in the game, the good play of defender Line Røddick Hansen had earned the admiration of our group. "Why isn't she on the national team?" someone asked. "Oh wait. She is on the national team. Just not the right [i.e., Swedish] national team." (She's Danish, as is clearly indicated by the "ø" in her name.) But in the 86th she is asked to leave the field, after she clips Melis's heels from behind, with no plausible excuse of going for the ball. Hansen's behavior is amusing, as she hangs her body in half, perhaps thinking of pretending to be hurt, but then realizing that's ridiculous, so instead she wanders off among her teammates, perhaps trying to hide from referee Palmqvist, who really has no choice but to issue the red. The stadium announcement of the incident is amusingly laconic ("Jaha... den här händelse...") and people chuckle.
The resulting free kick should be dangerous, but Elaine standing near the wall blocks it with her knee. Tyresö tries to equalize, of course, but they are very tired and now, with only 10 players, perhaps a little demoralized as well. In the 90th Öqvist earns a corner kick, and even keeper Söberg comes up the field to try to participate, but the ball is crossed in on the ground and is not threatening. Söberg sprints to her net, as Melis tries to beat her with a very long distance shot. Play slows down. Thirty seconds before the final whistle blows, Björk Gunnarsdottir and Elaine run into each other again and Elaine falls down one more time, but this time Björk Gunnarsdottir offers her her hand and there is no apparent animosity between the two. 
The name of the post refers to the fact that I had forgotten to bring my camera, but was fortunate enough to both have someone else with a camera, and someone else willing to take pictures. The camera itself had recently been on safari to the plains of Africa, a long trip during which it took many pictures of wild animals as they dashed across the sun-drenched grass of the savannah. The parallel between that journey and today's match was far too much to resist.
Oh yeah, one last inexplicable: why is there a pile of SNOW next to LdB's bus?? It can't be from the street, because it is clean and pure and has no sand or other crud on it. It was a bit startling to see, especially given the beautiful weather.
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