How Sarina Wiegman manages – by those who’ve experienced it

The photo shows Sarina Wiegman standing in the showers, clothes drenched. A red Ter Leede scarf and a gold medal are draped around her neck. Her players dance around her, arms aloft, celebrating their 2006-07 Dutch title.

“Sarina hates that,” says Ter Leede club president Kees de Lange, sitting on a bar stool in the clubhouse, half an eye on the Formula 1 race on TV in the background. “What?” The Athletic asks. “Being the centre of attention,” De Lange replies.

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It is true. In the other pictures hung on the walls next to the bar, Wiegman is on the periphery.

Fast forward 16 years and she has not changed. When Prince William presented the 53-year-old with her honorary CBE (as she isn’t British) at St George’s Park in June, she was almost speechless, and deflected the attention to her Euro 2022-winning England team.

A double European champion and World Cup finalist as a manager, a three-time FIFA Best Women’s Coach selection and winner of last year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony’s Coach Award, Wiegman has had to get used to taking centre stage since those early days coaching Ter Leede.

“She is the missing ingredient England were looking for,” said Leah Williamson, captain of that triumphant England side, at the celebrations in London’s Trafalgar Square last summer. “She is a special person.”

So what makes England’s history-making coach — the woman who now hopes to lead them to Women’s World Cup glory — the force she has become? This is a window into her world of management.

Baroness Sue Campbell came out glowing after she first interviewed Wiegman for the England job in 2020. The Football Association (FA) knew it was getting the best tactical and technical coach in the women’s game, but “what we didn’t