From the unconditional of the Pia Sundhage and Sarina Wiegman tournament to the international debutant Rhian Wilkinson, the female Eurocup, which begins this Wednesday in Switzerland, marks a historic milestone for the coaches.
Although women’s football is one of the sports with the best female representation, male coaches continue to have a slight advantage in terms of number, since nine of the 16 teams in the 2025 Eurocup are led by men and seven by women.
43.75% of trainers is a seismic leap from the 2013 Eurocup, in which only 18.75% of the teams were led by women. That figure had almost doubled in 2017 and remained stable in 2022 at 37.5%.
“It is clear that you are progressing, slow but sure,” says the network of trainers. “Of course, there is still a long way to go. The change takes time.”
The lack of success was not a determining factor. Between 2000 and the Women’s World Cup in 2023, all but one of the main women’s soccer tournaments, the World Cup, the Women’s Eurocup and the Olympic Games, was won by teams trained by women.
Norio Sasaki, the man who trained Japan to win the World Cup in 2011, was the only exception. Wiegman was the last woman who directed a team in one of the great championships, in 2023, in Australia, where England reached her first World Cup final and lost to Spain.
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13% of the Paris Olympic Games coaches were women
The Spanish coach Luis Rubiales was fired after being accused of sexual aggression and fined more than 10,000 euros ($ 10,798) for kissing the national team player Jenni Hermoso during the celebration of the World Cup, a case that unleashed the fury throughout the country.
Sundhage is, by far, the coach with more experience of the Eurocup 2025, after having been a coach of the United States and Sweden for five years each, of Brazil for four years and, now, of the host, Switzerland. He guided the Americans to the gold medal at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.
Wilkinson, who trains Wales in his debut in a great tournament, Elisabet Gunnarsdottir (Belgium), Nina Patalon (Poland) and Gemma Grainger (Norway) are the four women who debut as coach in a large tournament.
The women represented around 13% of the total coaches at the Paris Olympic Games last year, a figure practically identical to that of the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Women’s basketball headed the list with 50%, followed by football (33%) and hockey (16%). Among the worst were athletics, with 13%, rugby to seven female (8%) and female golf (6%).
With Reuters information
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