When it gets to this stage before a big game, even someone as experienced as Sarina Wiegman finds she can’t take her mind off it. Or, rather, she doesn’t want to take her mind off it, which is precisely why she’s so experienced.
“No, and I don’t want to relax,” she smiles.
“It’s Spain,” Wiegman says of her thoughts before taking on Sunday’s opponents. “Everything now is Spain. When you’re so close, well, I have that feeling a little bit anyway, but when you go to the next game, you’re only thinking, ‘OK, what’s next? What can we get in front of us? What challenges can we expect? How are we going to prepare the team?
“I just want to get ready.”
Wiegman has ensured England have never been more ready. The national team are on the brink of bringing a decade-long project to glorious completion and winning a first ever Women’s World Cup because of her crucial influence. The 53-year-old from The Hague can now be classed as the best manager in the game. While the key elements of that story are tactics, patience, strategy and the will – as well as investment from the FA – to hire a manager this good, there is also something acutely personal.
Wiegman can talk with authority about the rarefied build-up to such games because this is her fourth major international final, and her second World Cup final. It may also be her first World Cup final win. She has already got so close with the country that means the most to her, having narrowly lost 2-0 with the Netherlands to the USA in Lyon four years ago.
Something has changed for Wiegman since then, though. England has changed her, even if her effect on the national team has been far greater.
The manner in which Wiegman quickly moves on from questions about herself to talking about the collective is fairly typical, especially in the days before a game. She tends to be much more expansive after a match, and the belief from those who know her is that it’s not just about ultra-focus. It’s also about giving absolutely nothing away to the opposition. She is that guarded when it comes to the game.
One of the more surprising elements of a sit-down with Wiegman at England’s Terrigal base, so close to the biggest fixture in sport, is how relaxed she is and how willing she is to get into the personal. There is constant laughter – especially as she elaborates on Dutch directness against English politeness – but also a moment of poignancy as she discusses the various challenges she and the team have faced. The injuries are only a small part. Of true significance is her ongoing adjustment to life without her sister, who tragically passed away shortly before the Euro 2022 campaign.
“I’m a pretty positive person but of course I also have feelings,” Wiegman says. “I feel very privileged to work with this team. It has been so great. You have some setbacks with some players that got injured, which was very sad for them, but then you have to switch and say, ‘OK, this is the group of players we think are the best and this is the team now. We are going to go to the World Cup with them.’
Wiegman’s side have shown resilience throughout the World Cup— (The FA via Getty Images)
“Then, of course, there are still things in my personal life. When someone passes away who is really close to you, you don’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s two months now, it’s gone.’ I have strategies but of course sometimes that’s still sad and it is challenging for me too.”
It was Wiegman’s human nature, as much as her managerial insight, which was why the Football Association were so willing to wait for her in September 2021. So many of the other pieces were already in place, not least a brilliant generation of players. That came from a coaching revolution, and huge investment in the wider game.
It just needed, in the words of chief executive Mark Bullingham and women’s technical director Kay Cossington, someone to bring it all together.
“She’s created a really strong culture,” Bullingham says. “You can see what she brings in camp in terms of the togetherness. You can see how she galvanises anything. The fact there was a strong plan in place already just means it’s come to fruition really nicely.”
That does make it sound much easier than it was, which is admittedly how Wiegman makes it look, certainly at Euro 2022.
Even to get there, she had to work around English football culture as much as with her squad. So much of that still centres on 1966, that long wait, that block.
“I know it’s there,” she says. “When we started working, September 2021, I felt that the country was so desperate to win a final in a tournament. Everyone was saying that and the players too. I thought: ‘It’s very real.’”
The manager has created a winning culture with England, which led to their Euros triumph— (Getty Images)
She felt it was having an effect, so had to work against it.
“If you want to win it too much… so what do we have to do? What do we have to do to win, and how can we win? To get results, stop talking about the result because we know what we want. I heard again: 1966. Everyone’s talking about 1966. So let’s be at our best on Sunday and try to be successful.”
While she insists she gets “out of the noise”, she is clearly animated by this topic, as she immediately apologises for interrupting another question to go straight back to it.
“Another thing: football is so big in England. It’s so in the culture. That’s incredible to experience. It’s so big. It’s everywhere. That’s pretty cool, too.”
The way Wiegman speaks about this gives an insight into how she works. She doesn’t view it as a profound issue of national identity. She views it as just another problem to solve.
That has been the story of her time in the job and, especially, this campaign. Runs like Euro 2022 and this World Cup don’t just come from placing someone like this in a job, after all. It requires proper impact on the training ground. Wiegman found this very quickly with how she figured out the team before Euro 2022, and it admittedly did help that almost everything seemed to go for England in that tournament – not least home advantage.
This World Cup has been the exact opposite. Almost everything has gone against them, right down to the crowd in repeated games, above all that semi-final against Australia.
The Lionesses defeated hosts Australia in Sydney to reach their first World Cup final— (Getty Images)
Every test has just given Wiegman and her team something new, though, particularly England’s 3-5-2 formation.
The biggest test was clearly the loss of three key Euro 2022 players in Leah Williamson, Fran Kirby and Beth Mead, with Lauren James’s suspension from the last 16 only compounding that. As tends to be the case with Wiegman, she and her staff had already anticipated some of the problems. As has tended to be the case with this World Cup, though, there were still more issues. One was how constricted the team looked in those opening 1-0 wins against Haiti and then Denmark.
“During the tournament in the first two matches we were struggling a little bit and we had moments where we played really well but we also had moments where we were a little bit vulnerable. So, after the second match, Arjan [Veurink, assistant manager] came to me and said: ‘Sarina, let’s sit down, isn’t this the time to go to 3-5-2?’
“I said: ‘You’re completely right, this is the moment.’ With how the squad is built, and the players available, we can get more from the players and their strengths in this shape. So then we changed it.”
Wiegman and Arjan Veurink have reached the final of their last four major tournaments— (Getty Images)
Tactical insight alone only goes so far, though. Maximising it depends on communication, and understanding.
This is another of Wiegman’s qualities. The players feel she is very straight with them. Some of this might touch on her own thoughts about English politeness against Dutch directness. She feels she now understands her adopted country much more.
“I tried to learn a little bit more about the English,” she says. “The sayings sometimes are a problem, so I’m trying to learn a little bit more. I do think I understand the people a bit more but English people are very polite and sometimes you go, ‘OK, are you now being polite or are you really saying what you mean?’
“And that’s sometimes finding a balance, because you don’t have to be rude to be direct, so I ask the players and the staff, ‘You can be honest.’ It doesn’t mean that you’re rude. Just be direct.”
Dutch, in other words? “Yeah,” she laughs. “Dutch, but direct doesn’t mean rude. You can just say what you think and still be very respectful.”
It’s why you can take her at face value when she says she isn’t considering any overtures from the United States. Wiegman, of course, doesn’t actually want to be discussing any of this now, and not just for reasons of diplomacy. “We are in the final, but everything now, all my thinking, is how do we beat Spain.”
It’s an insight into why she’s there in the first place.
