Sundhage has seen and done it all before, both as a player and a coach.
A prolific striker, she was top scorer when Sweden won the first Women’s European Championship in 1984, became the first woman to score a goal at Wembley when her country beat England 2-0 in 1989, and retired as her team’s top scorer. country with 71 goals. .
As a coach for 30 years, she twice won Olympic gold with the United States and was a defeated finalist at the 2011 Women’s World Cup, while she led Sweden to the semifinals of Euro 2013 and their first Olympic medal with silver in 2016.
But at the age of 64, he decided not only to leave Brazil and start learning German, but also to take charge of a team that is still a relative newcomer to international tournaments.
“I want to lead by example,” he says. “That means I do things I’ve never done before.
“I can’t take anything for granted. You don’t know. [what is going to happen] the next day, the next week, and I’m very happy to be able to continue training because back then [when I first started out]”We had few teams, few countries that developed women’s football.”
A key witness to how women’s football has developed in recent decades, she says that “the speed of the game and the organisation” have changed a lot, as have the modern tools she now has at her disposal to help her in her training.
“Everything is developing very quickly. So let’s say I’m only away from the game for two years, if I come back I’ll be old, so you have to keep up with everything. So it’s easy to look forward to the next day.”
