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Sydney. — Sarina Wiegman’s list of achievements is as long as it is impressive.
When England take to the pitch at Sydney’s Stadium Australia on Sunday for their Women’s World Cup final against Spain, it will be the Dutch coach’s fourth major tournament final in a row.
Since becoming an international football manager in 2017, the 53-year-old has masterminded back-to-back wins at the Women’s Euros, first with the Netherlands in 2017 and then with England in 2022.
Those two triumphs were separated by a defeat for her native country in the 2019 World Cup final against serial winners the United States. Here, BBC Sport speaks to some of the players and coaches she has worked with over the years to get an insight into the woman attempting to make history again by leading the Lionesses to their first world title.
The player
It was on the streets of the Hague that Wiegman first discovered football, playing alongside her twin brother at a time when there were no girls-only teams. She was called up by the Netherlands for the first time in 1986, aged 16, and later moved to the US for a year to study and play football at the University of North Carolina (UNC).
Wiegman’s university team, the North Carolina Tar Heels, weren’t any ordinary side, with future World Cup winners Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly also in the ranks.
Lilly, who would go on to become the most-capped player in the history of the sport with 354 appearances for the United States, has fond memories of sharing her freshman year with the Dutchwoman. “I can picture her smile — there were always some laughs going on,” she says. “She was nice, friendly, and a very crafty midfielder, so I loved having her on my team.
“She worked hard.
“As a player she had this little feistiness, competitiveness about her, that I think now as a coach you wouldn’t see from her as much, because you have to be on an even keel. But as a player, I can see her game face, and it was tense when she played. I loved that.”
Wiegman has spoken of being anxious as she embarked on that first trip to the US, saying she was completely out of her comfort zone, but her nerves weren’t apparent to those looking on.
“I don’t think it was a daunting experience for her,” says Anson Dorrance, who ran the women’s soccer programme at UNC before he became the USA’s national coach.
“She was already a Dutch international, travelling all the time.
“She didn’t appear in the least to be self-conscious or paranoid or afraid. She appeared wonderfully well-adjusted.
“We embraced her immediately. All we could see was an immediate adjustment to the American culture. The Dutch would be called the Americans of Europe — a swashbuckling nation, very frank and direct. She fitted right in.”
The apprentice coach
Wiegman combined her playing career with teaching PE, then started football coaching when she retired as a player. When the Women’s Eredivisie was created in 2007 she landed her first full-time job as a coach at ADO Den Haag, having initially turned it down when it was only offered on a semi-professional basis.
Former Netherlands international Leonne Stentler was one of the players Wiegman took to ADO Den Haag in her first season there.
“The way she welcomed me and the way she talked about how she wanted to do it was warm but really ambitious,” says Stentler.
She recalls an unusual rule from Wiegman’s early days that prevented anybody in the team being allowed to take a drink of water by themselves – it had to be done together.
“At first she was a hard coach with a lot of rules, but during the first year she made so many changes and worked on herself,” she says.
“I know she reads a lot of management books so that was what she was doing and we experienced all the exercises she read about. We really felt the development of ourselves, but also the development of her.”— dailymail.
Online Reporter