How Sarina Weigman went from disguising herself as a boy to play football to the most successful women’s manager ever
WITH the Lionesses roaring into the World Cup final for the first time, manager Sarina Wiegman is celebrating her own record-breaking achievement.
The former PE teacher has become the first manager to take two national teams all the way to the final — having coached her native Netherlands through the tournament in 2019.
With characteristic modesty, the 53-year-old said: “We have made it to two finals and you never take anything for granted but I feel like I am living in a fairytale.”
Sarina, who as a child disguised herself as a boy to play in her local team, is now being talked about as a possible successor to Gareth Southgate as manager of the England men’s team.
FA boss Mark Bullingham confirmed that it was considering appointing a woman when Southgate’s contract expires at the end of next year, saying: “It’s the best person for the job. If that best person is a woman then why not?”
And those who have trained under mum-of-two Sarina, a three-time winner of Fifa Women’s Coach of the Year, reckon she is well qualified.
Ellen White, part of last year’s Euros-winning squad, says the key to Sarina’s success is how much she gets to know her players.
Ellen, 34, said: “We needed someone to bring everyone’s strengths together on and off the pitch and allow them to be free to express themselves.
“Sarina is a genuinely lovely person that shows a lot of empathy. She wants to know you on a human level, not just as a player. She has conversations with you about your family.
“Her communication levels are on another level to what we have experienced before. It’s the fact she knows each player individually and knows what makes them tick.”
True grit
But what sets Sarina apart is also her true grit — born from a lifetime of fighting for her place in a sporting world dominated by men.
Sarina, who learned her skills playing against boys when girls’ football was banned in the Netherlands, led the charge for women to be paid professionals in the country.
Dutch player Leonne Stentler said: “She tried to fight for that at every moment. She saw our progression was going so fast that it would be possible some day that we would be full-time professional players.
“She had to fight for everything. She was trying to break through every wall.”
That fighting spirit was awakened early in her childhood in The Hague when she discovered a love of football alongside twin brother Tom.
As her country banned girls from the pitch, she cut her hair short to look more like a boy, so she could play alongside her sibling in the local team, ESDO.
Despite the ban, her parents supported her dreams.
She recalled: “As a little girl, when I was five or six, girls were not allowed to play football, but I just liked football and my parents never made any fuss. They just said, ‘If you want to play football, you’re going to play football’.”
A breakthrough then came in the 1970s, as Uefa made all of its member nations invest in women’s football and Sarina was able to move to HSV Celeritas, which had a female team.
Despite her obvious talent, the barriers to women were so entrenched Sarina never saw it as a possible career.
She said: “I knew in elementary school that I wanted to be a PE teacher. That’s very strange, too, but I just wanted to be involved in sports.
“I didn’t know I could be a coach because there was nothing for women in football — I couldn’t see it, so I didn’t think that it was an opportunity.”
In 1987, the midfielder joined the Delft club KFC 71, winning the national cup the same year and was selected to play for her country.
A year later, at the age of 18, she was part of the Netherlands squad invited by Fifa to compete in the Women’s Invitation Trophy, a precursor of the World Cup, in China.
While there, she caught the eye of Anson Dorrance, the manager of the US Women’s Team and head coach at the University of North Carolina, who offered her a sports scholarship and a place in the university’s Tar Heels women’s soccer team.
The secondment to the US, where women’s football was on the up, was a turning point, making her more determined to make her mark in her homeland.
“It was an absolute trigger for me,” she said.
“I thought: ‘If I can contribute in the Netherlands, to create what is in the US in the Netherlands, I would be a happy person.’ It took 20 years.”
On her return, she worked as a PE teacher at Segbroek College in The Hague, a job she kept throughout her playing career.
She trained with the men at ADO Den Haag several times a week and eventually joined the women’s team of Ter Leede, where she played for nine years, helping them to win two league titles and the Dutch cup, while also earning 104 caps for her country.
As captain of the team, her leadership skills were clear — as well as her need to nurture the players who, unlike their male counterparts, were not paid professional wages.
Teammate Jeanet van der Laan recalled: “She was pretty loud in the dressing room and very confident about her qualities.
“Sarina came to visit me because she wanted to see where I lived.
“I only had a washing machine and not a dryer.
“She asked me, ‘How are you going to do this? You have to train, practise almost every day. How are you going to dry your gear?’.
“I said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t have any money’. So, she gave me her tumble dryer. And that’s something I will never forget.”
Sarina, who is married to childhood sweetheart and sports lecturer Marten Glotzbach, retired from the pitch to start a family at 33, and had daughters Sacha and Lauren.
While still working as a PE teacher, she returned to the club as its coach, winning the double in her first season — and continued to fight for the rights of women players.
When the Dutch women’s league, Eredivisie, was launched in 2007, she was asked to coach a new team for Ado Den Haag on a part-time basis but she refused until they gave her a full-time job.
She became the first female coach at a Dutch professional football organisation when she joined Sparta Rotterdam.
Host of honours
In 2014, she became the assistant coach of the Dutch women’s team but turned down the top job a year later.
“Sarina only begins a new adventure when she’s ready for it,” explained husband Marten.
In 2017, she agreed to take over as head coach and, in one of the first team meetings, she handed players an article entitled “Thirteen things you should give up if you want to be successful”.
Included on the list was, “Give up your need to be liked”.
It’s a philosophy that Dutch former player Leonne Stentler says the single-minded coach lives by.
She said: “Sarina is someone who has a goal and just tries to reach that goal.
“To anything else, she’s just . . . blind is not the right word, but she doesn’t let anyone or anything change her mind or influence her.”
The approach worked — as she guided the Netherlands to their first Euros win in 2017, earning Sarina a host of honours, including being named Best Fifa Women’s Coach and a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.
She followed it by taking the Dutch team to a runners-up medal at the 2019 World Cup, following which she became the first woman to be honoured with a statue at the Dutch Football Association.
But a year after the World Cup triumph she disappointed her home fans by agreeing to take over from Phil Neville as head coach of the Lionesses, saying: “Why not? I only want to work at the top. I wouldn’t be happy with any less.”
A brilliant tactician, Sarina has turned around the fortunes of the England team, who have lost just one match out of 38 under her stewardship.
While she nurtures her players, she also has a ruthless streak, and caused controversy by leaving England captain Steph Houghton out of this year’s World Cup squad because of injury.
As she heads to her second World Cup final as a national coach, she says winning is not as important as changing the perception of women’s football — and creating opportunities she was denied as a child.
Sarina said: “I really love the medals but what I’m proud of most is that now young girls have perspective, young girls can play football and young girls can wear shirts [with players’ names on].
“When you go to the grocery store and people tell you, ‘My daughter was wearing that shirt but my son is wearing that shirt now too’, we’ve changed society.
“That’s the change I’m proud of the most. I didn’t have opportunities. I have two daughters, they played football in mixed teams when they were younger, and it was normal.
“Things are changing, but there is still a long way to go.”