Zećira Mušović, goalkeeper in the Swedish national team and in Chelsea FC is this week’s Their Pitch player. She made her debut for Sweden’s senior team back in 2018 when Sweden played against Russia in Algarve Cup, a match they won 3-0. Since then Mušović has played in total five matches with Sweden. Looking at her merits and her background the number of five caps might seem like a small number. Mušović has 109 appearances in the Damallsvenskan with the club FC Rosengård, and she has also won the Damallsvenskan with them three times.
Mušović signed for Chelsea during the Christmas break in the 2020/21 season and in Their Pitch when she talks about that even though it was an easy choice to go abroad it was also a hard decision:
- I went from one winning team to another winning team.
And that’s no understatement because since she joined the Blues she has picked up three titles; Barclay’s Women’s Super league, Continental Cup (ligacupen) and the FA-cup. Still, one might wonder how she thought, when she left Rosengård where she was the first choice in a starting XI, to go to Chelsea to compete for the spot, with German goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger.
The Swedish national team has three good and quality goalkeepers, all of them with great merits, that on paper, would have been more than enough to be the first choice as goalkeepers in many teams.. Hedvig Lindahl, who has had a long, successful and stable career both in the Swedish League and in others; she has played in Chelsea, Wolfsburg and now currently in Atletico Madrid. Jennifer Falk, who has been the starting goalkeeper for many years now in BK Häcken (former Kopparbergs/Göteborgs FC) but also inJitex BK.
Since Mušović was announced to Chelsea, she has been clear with her goals: She wants to be the best goalkeeper in the world and also become the first choice as the starting goalkeeper within Emma Hayes’ Chelsea team. The second half of the 2020/21 season Mušović got her chance in a couple of Cup games and in a few league games. It was clear that Berger was Hayes’ first choice in the bigger matches still. At the beginning of the current season Berger was still the one named in most starting XI:s for Chelsea.
Mušović made her Champions League debut for Chelsea in the group stage and she was also in the starting line up when the Blues from London traveled to Wolfsburg in order to try and win the group to make it into the knockout stages of the fashionable tournament.
Although the reason for Mušović starting that game might have been the fact that Berger was among the players that had been tested positive for Covid just before they were about to travel. Chelsea’s performance as a whole might have reflect on the way Mušović’s own performance was. They lost 4-0 and the Blues’ chances to repeat the success from the year before, when they reached the final, was gone.
When we entered the year of 2022 was Berger yet again in the line up when Chelsea kicked it off in the league, the Conti Cup and the FA Cup. Sure, Mušović got a few starts here and there in the Cup games, but Berger had the position in between the posts when the Conti Cup final was being played against Manchester City in front of 41.000 fans. But that final, might have changed Mušović’s chances. Chelsea lost 3 to1 and Berger’s performance was questioned and discussed.
Since then, Zećira Mušović has been in line up after line up. The BIG question now is; will we get to see her in what might be the current season’s biggest and most important game; the semi-final in the FA Cup against Arsenal on April 17?
What Amanda Ilestedts say
What are Zećira Mušović’s best qualities?
Amanda Ilestedt, centre-back in Paris Saint-Germain and in the Swedish national team, and also one of Mušović’s closests friend, describes her like this:
- Zećira Mušović is a woman with big ambitions in life, both on and off the pitch. As a goalkeeper, she is very active while playing, and it doesn’t matter if it's a training session or a match. She stays in the moment, very present, and always wants to get the best out of every situation.
She is good at using her physique and her size, she is very quick and is good at playing with her feet. I think she has taken big steps in her development the last couple of years and that she really has the potential of becoming one of the best goalkeepers in the world.
For me personally, she is one of the most caring and reliable people I know. There’s never a boring moment in life with “Zesse” around and the talking topics can be a mix from being very serious and deep to being extremely bizarre and funny. That is one of the things I really appreciate about her.
The ‘modern’ goalkeeper is often described as one that has to be able to take part in the buildup and needs the ability to integrate well with the backline. Mušović, who left a top team in Sweden for a top team in England, would be used to possession based play since these teams often have the ball a lot during games. This might have given her the advantage of having the opportunity to practise on being a part of the play from the back a lot, helping her team to start attacks from the back.
What does TransferLab say?
In the scouting platform TransferLab, we’ll take a look at Zećira Mušović in the player profile: Goalkeeper - all round. TransferLab ranks her in the 81st percentile, when we compare her to the rest of the goalkeepers in the same profile within the WSL looking at the last six months performances.
Her strengths are first and foremost found in the metric parries. “Parrying” should not be confused with making a “save.” “Parrying” occurs when the goalkeeper knowingly controls the ball with the hands by deliberately pushing it to an area where it can be played later. Another quality Transferlab rank her highly in is her Aerial goalkeeping ability. att hon besitter hög kvalitet.
Mušović’s ranking in the percentile for parries is 100 and GK Aerials (quality) 83.
In the guide “How to Stop Sweden” that the Swedish FA together with Adidas have created together with Sweden’s new match shirt ahead of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 in England, Anders Eriksson, Sweden’s match analyst describes Mušović:
"Mušović really commands the penalty area. Since she rarely concedes goals from bad angles or from outside the penalty area, find ways of advancing the ball into the central area of the box before attempting shots at Mušović".
For fun, we let TransferLab compare Mušovićs to her “competitors” - Lindahl, Falk and Berger. The strengths and the qualities GK Aerials and Parries are the two metrics where Mušović stands out compared to them.
And the way Ilestedt describes Mušović as a keeper that is good with her feet? Well, she showed that when Chelsea hosted Aston Villa at Kingsmeadow a couple of weeks ago, when she in injury time, assisted Sam Kerr with a long ball from the back, who scored the only goal of the game giving The Blues a very important win.
Conclusion
It’s not a wild guess that one of the reasons to why Zećira Mušović still is considered as Sweden’s third goalkeeper might be the lack of playing time in her club. Add to that, both Hedvig Lindahl and Jennifer Falk are two really great keepers. Peter Gerhardsson has, what one might call, luxury problems, having three such well-experienced and quality goalkeepers to choose from. One thing’s for sure; if Zećira Mušović gets more and more playing time on a regular basis in Chelsea, she should be able to challenge Lindahl and Falk in the near future about who of them should start for Sweden.