Whatever happens tonight in the semi-final between Germany and France, there will be two women sitting on the benches andin the final of the Women’s European Championship on Sunday July 31 at Wembley. The England coach, the Dutch Sarina Wiegman, who already led the ‘orange’ to lift the last European Championship in 2017, secured their pass to the final after overwhelming Sweden (4-0) in the first semifinal, while today’s game will have two women on the bench: Martina Voss-Tecklenburg by the Germans and Corinne Deacon by the French.
The coaches ask for passage in the European Championship with authority. Only six of the sixteen teams opted to have a woman on the bench, but they have shown their potential to the point that three of the four semi-finalists are led by a female coach.
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It is good news that women are showing that they can also succeed on the bench to start changing the current dynamic, in which there are a majority of men managing women’s football teams. It is still difficult, among the clubs with the greatest potential, to find women in charge. In the case of national teams, the figures are more encouraging.
Thus, 37.5% of the teams participating in the Euro have been coached by women: Martina Voss-Tecklenburg (Germany), Irene Fuhrmann (Austria), Anna Signel (Finland), Corinne Deacon (France), Sarina Wiegman (England) and Milena Bertolini (Italy). And indeed they have come a long way.
“We know that, in terms of the training of the coaches, there is still a lot to improve”, he assured Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, at a recent press conference: “We need to offer opportunities, but we also need to make sure that there are equal opportunities”.
The figures have remained fairly stagnant. During the 2019 World Cup, only 9 of the 24 coaches were women, the same number as at the 2015 World Cup. At the last European Championship, in 2017, there were only six women coaching teams, just like this summer. Men continue to dominate the benches, although their results speak for themselves.