After two days of rain in Varazdin as a boost for the World Cup qualifier premiere between Croatia and Sweden, it was clear that Peter Gerhardsson's pass-oriented football would be put to the test.
And even though the Swedes dominated ball possession from the start on the rainy pitch, they had despaired hard in the last third of the first half.
0-0 at half time and zero Swedish shots on goal.
The second half began, however, with a Swedish jump start.
Fridolina Rolfö immediately tested the Croatian goalkeeper with a distance shot.
Shortly afterwards, Marija Banusic got the dream position with a free kick from 20 meters.
She got a good hit with her right foot but the hard shot went straight at the goalkeeper.
Fast hero
It took until the 62nd minute before Sweden could break the deadlock.
Stina Blackstenius broke free and came around on the right edge and found the inning on a free Lina Hurtig.
The Linköping midfielder could easily push in the 1-0 goal.
But a 1-0 lead is fragile and with a quarter of an hour left to play, it became very nervous in the Swedish penalty area when Ivana Rudelic turned and twisted with success.
The final position was brilliant but the Croatian continued to turn and the chance ran out in the sand.
In the last minute of the match, Kosovar Asllani was able to determine the final result 2-0 when she poked in a shot return from Rolfö.
Thus, the new national team captain Peter Gerhardsson has collected his first victory in his first competitive match.
- When you go out after the match and almost sink down to the tubers (dialect for the tubers), you understand that it was a bit of a problem today.
With that in mind, we make it clearly approved.
On a better level, we get paid better for our passing game, he says to SVT Sport.
After the premiere rounds in the World Cup qualifiers, Sweden is second in its qualifying group behind Denmark - which won 6-1 away against Hungary today.