On International Women’s day, Data Scientist and PhD Researcher Lotte Bransen published an article from doing research together with professor Jesse Davies that was based on their publication named: Women’s football analyzed: interpretable expected goals models for women after doing research at the university KU Leuven, in the Netherlands.
After looking at around 2100 matches from the women’s game they had drawn some really interesting conclusions, for example about behaviours and patterns regardings shots. In the article one could read:
“Women tend to shoot from locations with a smaller angle to the goal and in general from closer distances to the goal. Interestingly, men shoot more often than women from the so-called ”Robben” location, inside the box near the corner of the box where an inverted winger can shoot and curl the ball into the far corner of the goal.”
Why is this interesting in an article about Swedish forward and FC Barcelona player Fridolina Rolfö? Well, mainly because this footballer can shoot. If she fires away, the goalkeepers tend to have absolutely no chance of stopping Rolfö’s rockets, when hitting the ball with powerful and precise strikes.
Swedish national teammate and close friend Hanna Glas describes Rolfö like this:
"For me, Fridolina is one of the best attacking players in this world. Not even does she has an amazing physique, her intelligence and decision making on the pitch are also on an extremely high level, and then I haven't even mentioned that rocket of a left foot she has!
She can shoot like a horse but also deliver delicate crosses or passes. To make it even harder for the defenders to read she has also now started to score with her right foot. When she dribbles the ball with her speed it's hard to take the ball from her - and then I'm one of the best at defending. I know the opponents are getting as scared facing her as she is getting when you suddenly pop out the closet unexpectedly. On top of that, she is an amazing friend and person that I'm so happy to have her as a close friend."
Rolfö has many amazing strikes on her resumé. But one that really comes to mind is probably her left-foot brace vs Australia in the group stage of the Olympic tournament in Tokyo last summer.
In the podcast Their Pitch, she got the question if she has her own favourite goal from the ones scored and then she answered that the goal vs Australia in the knock-out stage of the same tournament comes to her mind.
Fridolina Rolfö is a forward who has been a part of the Swedish senior national team since 2014, when she made her debut, coming on from the bench in the 85th minute in a friendly game against Germany on October 29th.
So far Rolfö has made 62 appearances for Sweden and speaking of the goals where she has plenty to choose her favourites from, she has scored 21. She joined her current club, FC Barcelona during the 2021 summer transfer window. Rolfö signed a two-year deal with the Primera Iberdrola champions, then coming from Vfl Wolfsburg in the Frauen Bundesliga.
During her playing days in Sweden, Rolfö has represented two clubs in the Damallsvenskan; Jitex BK and Linköping FC, and with the latter, she won the Swedish league title in 2016 before she left Sweden to play in Germany. In 2017 she joined FC Bayern München, a club that she played with for 2,5 years before she left them to play with their biggest league rival, Vfl Wolfsburg.
Rolfö played in total 110 games in the Swedish top-flight where she scored 32 goals and made 14 assists.
What kind of player is she then, Fridolina Rolfö? What are her skills and what does she bring to her team?
Since Rolfö joined Barcelona, one might say that she really has proven her flexibility out on the pitch. Rolfö has been used, quite often in Barcelona’s backline as a left full-back, but of course also as a left winger in the attack. This is also her primary position playing for the Swedish national team. Using the scouting tool Transfer Lab, we can look at her metrics in the ‘Winger - All Round’ player profile. Rolfö ranks high on the percentile and this shows her qualities in most of the metrics. Above the 90th percentile, we can see that her qualities particularly lies in expected assists (key passes) 95 % and in key passes (quality) 94 %. Moving on to forward passes received (quality) 90 % and expected goals (shots open play) 96 %, passes into box (quality) 94 % and carries (quality) 93 %.
As you can see, she is ranked in the 99 percentile overall in the player profile for her position amongst wingers in the Primera Iberdrola looking at a time frame for the last 12 months.
Rolfö has not just established herself as a starting player in Sweden’s national team, she is also considered as one of the key players without a doubt. Peter Gerhardsson, Sweden’s head coach, uses Rolfö primary as a left-winger in a 4-3-3 formation or in 3-4-3 formation, but we have also seen Rolfö play in the attacking midfielder position, No’ 10, in the absence of Kosovare Asllani at times.
With her ability to move with the ball down her wing, she was a very influential player during last summer’s Olympic tournament where she often was involved in Sweden’s attacking play. Looking at Rolfö’s general statistical numbers in Wyscout, that can give us a hint of how well the Swedish winger performed in Tokyo in last summer’s Olympics. Her xG on average per game was 0.25. In total across all games, she attempted 12 shots, with 50% on target. She scored 3 goals, made 2 assists, and 7 shot assists.
Rolfö seemed to enjoy the moment in Japan. It reflected in her performances, maybe it was shown most in her dribbling.
Rolfö’s dribbling skill makes her very useful in the way both her club team and Sweden attack, whether it’s about drawing opponents out wide to create space for her teammates inside the box or opening up channels for other players to move into when she cuts inside with the ball causing defenders to follow. According to Wyscout, she averaged 4.9 dribbles per 90 minutes in the Olympic tournament and had a success rate of 66.7%. In total, Rolfö attempted 24 dribbles across all games. It didn’t matter what kind of opposition she faced — skilled technical players in Japan or Canada’s composed defence: against Japan, Rolfö attempted 3 dribbles and was 100% successful while in the gold medal match against Canada the same numbers were 6 successful dribbles with a 75% success rate.
In the quarterfinal, Rolfö’s first attempted dribble ended with an assist coming from a well-placed cross, which was taken care of perfectly by Eriksson who headed the ball into the back of the net. The image below illustrates the play. Rolfö is inside the box on the left-hand side, dribbling past Japan’s defenders before crossing the ball where Eriksson waits.
Third time European League Champion; Sweden, Germany and Spain.
Rolfö came from Germany and Vfl Wolfsburg, after picking up one Frauen Bundesliga League Title back in the 2019/20 season, when she joined FC Barcelona in summer 2021.
This last weekend, on Sunday, March 13th, FC Barcelona secured the league title win after beating Real Madrid 5-0. The Catalans have an impressive season with 24 wins out of 24 games played and has already won the league, already in round 24 out of 30. That gives Rolfö her third European League Title, from playing in three different leagues; Linköping FC 2016, Vfl Wolfsburg 2019/20 and FC Barcelona 2021/22.
The Primera Iberdrola Champions, that are also the reigning UEFA Women’s Champions League Champions, will most definitely want to end up as back to back champions in Europe’s most fashionable club tournament as well, so to guess that there is more to come for Rolfö, is probably not a wild one. Sweden’s Diamantbollen winner 2021 has already made her mark in the UWCL, one example is this goal when Barcelona played Arsenal in the group stage earlier in the current season.