How the upsets happened | Sweden-Switzerland WFC 2025

The World Floorball Championships in Ostrava is over, and the floorball map has (at least temporarily) been redrawn. Switzerland and Czechia faced each other in the final game, where Lara Heini stood on her head and a fighting and clawing Swiss team ended an impressive run as world champions.

But the fall of the giants probably feeds us the biggest curiosity from an analysis standpoint, so in this mini-series of two articles, I will look at how the upsets in the semifinals actually happened.

Let us start out with the semifinal between Switzerland and Sweden, in which Switzerland came out victorious with a score of 6-3.

I normally limit the xProgress analysis to only looking at five-on-five play, since that is the game state that is the fundament of floorball, and of course also the way most of the games are played. For this game, I will include special teams as well, mainly because Sweden pulled their goalie already in the 49th minute of the game, and it had a huge effect on the game and the scoring chances.

But let us start with looking at five-on-five play

The aftermath of this game has been a lot about Switzerland outplaying Sweden in the five-on-five part of the game. Looking at these numbers, the game was not lopsided, rather more or less a coin toss during five-on-five play. Meaning it is tough to call a clear winner from a scoring chance perspective.

But looking at it from an on paper quality in terms of the players on both teams, Switzerland obviously did great! I think it is fair to say, that their roster is not as good as the Swedish one. From that perspective – a really good performance from them.

Now, floorball is about scoring goals, and the five-on-five part went to Switzerland with a clear margin, beating the Swedes 6-1 with five players each on the court, which is impressive numbers.

So, let us include special teams in the mix

Like I mentioned, a lot of this game was played with one field player more for Sweden. A two minute powerplay, where they got to some good scoring chances.

Now all of a sudden there is a pretty big advantage for Sweden. Of course, scoring effects matter a lot here. Sweden is behind by several goals in the end of the game, and Switzerland is mostly defending. That influences the numbers here quite a lot.

But all in all, we have to say that this was a winnable game for Sweden, despite being behind. According to expected goals, Sweden should have had this game with a couple of goals. Though we also know, that the game would have played out in another way, if not Switzerland had been sitting in a 6-1 lead after half of the third period. Context is key here.

We will get back to the six-on-five play for Sweden through looking at game tape further down this article.