Germany ‘edge’ 10-woman Italy – Sweden blank Russia

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DEVENTER, Netherlands, July 22, (AFP): Babett Peter’s second-half penalty edged defending champions Germany to a 2-1 victory over 10-woman Italy at the women’s Euro tournament in the Netherlands.

In the other Group B game, captain Lotta Schelin and Stina Blackstenius powered Sweden to a 2-0 win over Russia.

In an eventful game in Tilburg, Germany drew first blood in the 19th minute when Josephine Henning headed home after Italian keeper Laura Giuliani spilled the ball following Dzsenifer Marozsan’s free-kick.

Italy equalised from a counter-attack 10 minutes later as Ilaria Mauro nutmegged German keeper Almuth Schult after a pass from Barbara Bonansea who had sprinted down the whole length of the left wing. Peter scored from the spot on 67 minutes after Giuliani had brought down Anja Mittag in the box, and a minute later Italy were reduced to 10 players as defender Elisa Bartoli picked up a second yellow card.

Germany hit the post twice – Sara Daebritz in the first half and Mandy Islacker in the second – while Bonansea saw her free-kick cleared by a diving Schult with 10 minutes to go as Italy were eliminated. “I think this was a great Italy,” said Italy coach Antonio Cabrini.

“We played on a par with a much better team than us. We had a great 70 minutes and believed in it to the very end.”

In Deventer, Schelin scored Sweden’s opening goal on 22 minutes, heading in a superb free-kick taken by Magdalena Ericsson.

Blackstenius made it 2-0 in the 51st minute as she picked up a poor goal kick by Russian keeper Tatiana Shcherbak, beat two defenders and fired a shot that Anna Kozhnikova only managed to deflect into the net off the post.

“Three points, two goals, that’s good,” said Sweden coach Pia Sundhage.

“I’m happpy about the result and parts of the performance, especially in the first half.”

Russia could have secured a quarter-final berth if they had won, following their surprising 2-1 win over Italy in the Group B opener.

But they never got close as Sweden put them under heavy pressure from the start with Kosovare Asllani’s long-range shot smacking the crossbar on 10 minutes.

It took Russia half an hour to threaten up front, but Elena Danilova missed from long range.

At the other end, Schelin shot narrowly wide across goal and Linda Sembrant headed wide from a corner just before half-time. Sweden continued to dominate in the second half but squandered their chances, with Sembrant heading against the post five minutes from the end.

“Sweden were very strong when it comes to set pieces, there were a lot of them and this was something that didn’t allow us to play well,” said Russian coach Elena Fomina.

Having left her lab coat, goggles and gloves behind, University of Bath immunology researcher Frankie Brown now sprints up and down Scotland’s right flank at the women’s European championships in the Netherlands.

The 29-year-old full-back, who spent last season at Bristol City in the English Super League, has combined two very different fields – football and science – to give her life a boost.

“I’ve always juggled both,” Brown told AFP.

“I like the balance in my life of having both aspects.”

Born in a bush hospital in Botswana where her father was on an assignment as an architect, Brown took up football as a child.

“I have a younger brother, three years younger than me, and we always used to play together and I played at school a lot with the boys,” she said about her beginnings before moving to play for Falkirk Girls, her first team.

Brown spent almost ten years with the Edinburgh-based Hibernian as she did her undergraduate studies at Edinburgh University.

“I did immunology undergraduate at Edinburgh and then went to Stirling uni and did my PhD there,” said Brown. For her PhD, she attended the women’s football academy at Stirling, alongside current teammates including strikers Lisa Evans and Christie Murray.

“The idea was to allow us to train full time but then also study so we’d do training sessions at seven o’clock in the morning and then we’d go to classes or the office or whatever we had to do,” said Brown. “Then we’d go to our club training in the evening and we’d do strength sessions in between so it was a brilliant setup.

“It gave us the first opportunity to really go full-time training, and then when a lot of us moved to professional setups, to various different places, it was less of a jump for us because we had that already in place.”

In 2011-2012, Brown managed a short stint with Apollon Limassol in Cyprus to get a taste of the Champions League, along with another current teammate Hayley Lauder.

“It was for Champions League and also because I hadn’t got out of Scotland at that point so it was a good experience. Very hot!” she chuckles.

With her PhD, Brown became a research associate at the University of Bath and moved on to play for Bristol, just miles from her workplace.

“My PhD was more sports immunology, exercise immunology, how exercise affects your immune system, and now I’m moving more from there into a cancer field now, cancer immunology, that’s my real passion,” she added.

“My mum passed away with breast cancer. In my career, I’m just steering myself, to be fair.

“My first study, I compared male and female footballers and how they responded to exercise, and then I moved on from that study to more training and training camp situations.

“So I took samples from us before and after the recent intense training camp.”

Brown is now waiting for a new offer from a club as her Bristol days are over, but she has her feet on the ground as it is the university job that she lives off.

“I’m on a two-day-a-week contract at Bath and I love the work I do there, I love my colleagues, I think that the work we do is brilliant,” she said.

In the future, Brown expects to keep combining both her passions.

“I’m in the latter stages of my career, I will really, really miss football, so I think I will always have to be involved in some aspect of it.

“I’ve had such a great long career, and I’ve learnt so much, and I’ve got so much out of football that I almost feel like I have so much knowledge that I need to give that back to the sport.

“I think the future will still be a balance of science and football hopefully anyway.”

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