When Sweden won Olympic silver in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, the United States accused the team of playing boring football.
Perhaps the statement was based on bitterness among the American women after the exit in the quarterfinals.
But the truth was also that the game, under the leadership of Pia Sundhage, was very much strongly defensive.
For the Swedish squad in Tokyo, the conditions are different.
When Sweden was stumbling close to breaking the USA's winning streak in the training international match at Friends arena in April (but saw Megan Rapinoe put the equalizer on penalty in the final minutes), Nilla Fischer and Linda Sembrant were on the field.
Found game formation that was effective
But when Sweden now steps out on the Olympic stage, the two experienced defense generals are missing.
- For Sweden to succeed against the USA, and really throughout the entire Olympic tournament, the defensive game must work.
That's the key.
It will probably be Nathalie Björn and Amanda Ilestedt who take a place in a back line and these players get their big breakthroughs at the Olympics and rise a few more notches, so I think the pieces will fall into place.
But defense is really the big question mark for me, says Markus Johannesson.
Swedish players about the premiere: "Gold is reasonable"
Javascript is disabled
Javascript must be turned on to play video
Read more about browser support
The browser is not supported
SVT does not support playback in your browser.
We therefore recommend that you switch to another browser.
Read more about browser support
Zecira Musovic, Magdalena Eriksson and Kosovar Asllani Photo: SVT
How important was the match at Friends, where they were close to beating the USA?
- I think it was important based on finding a game formation that was effective against the USA.
But I also think that Sweden went in with a completely different attitude than the Americans.
They played aggressively and really wanted to show the USA what they stand for, while the Americans did not have their very best players from the start.
Since then, the United States has probably put in a higher gear.
"Nice to mess with the US right away"
But that Sweden meets the big football dragon in the west directly in the premiere, Johannesson does not think needs to be a disadvantage.
- As an individual match, it will be very tough. But for Sweden, I think it is very important not to put too much emphasis on this match. You can rather see it as nice to disturb the USA directly in the group. Should you go on a loss here, it is important to maintain self-confidence, because there are many teams that go on and that is when the playoffs begin Sweden should be at its best.