Sundhage faces her 'biggest challenge' as she prepares host nation Switzerland for Euro 2025
GENEVA (AP) — Soccer great Pia Sundhage's long international career stretches back a decade beyond the first Women's European Championship she won decisively for Sweden in 1984.
Now aged 65, the two-time Olympic title-winning coach — both times for the United States — is preparing host nation Switzerland's team to kick off Euro 2025 next Wednesday.
'I would say it's the biggest challenge I have ever had,' said Sundhage, who has coached in a World Cup final, three Olympic gold-medal games and a Copa América final. 'It is really, really interesting.'
Her first tournament coaching the Swiss is 41 years after the inaugural Euros was won in conditions that seem more than a lifetime ago for women's soccer.
In 1984, the four-team UEFA competition was home-and-away semifinals and final, with second legs played weeks after the first in games of 70 minutes, not 90. The title was won in England with fewer than 3,000 fans in the stadium and no national television coverage.
Sweden beat England in a penalty shootout after each won the home leg 1-0. At the muddy, rain-soaked home field of Luton Town, Sundhage added to her first-leg goal to score the winning spot-kick, captured in fuzzy footage of the game.
'That was just unique,' Sundhage recalled to reporters at a recent briefing. 'Two pages, are you kidding me? Oh look, there's a picture as well.'
In 2025, Switzerland will play to packed stadiums in a 16-nation event that will set a tournament record of about 600,000 spectators. The venues are Switzerland's best and four of the eight also were used at the men's Euro 2008 co-hosted with Austria.
Sundhage has been there for most stops on the women's soccer journey: helping Sweden win that first European title, then taking third place at the first Women's World Cup in 1991. She coached host Sweden to the Euro 2013 semifinals and now has a second chance with a home team.
The challenge to get Switzerland tournament-ready has Sundhage drawing on what she learned coaching in China, the U.S, Sweden and Brazil — leaving her, she said, 'really rich' in experiences.
'All these different teams, countries have made me really open minded,' said the coach who believes passionately in teamwork though is very much her own person.
After each Olympic title, in 2008 and 2012, she declined the traditional invitation for U.S. team gold medalists to visit the White House. From presidents on each side of the aisle.
'I felt like I'm not connected to the White House,' Sundhage explained recently. 'If I have a choice I can go in the other direction, I'm going to do that. Regardless, Bush or Obama, I'd rather go back to Sweden.'
For five years she coached a stellar U.S. squad that was denied a World Cup title in 2011 by Japan only by a penalty shootout. She was immersed in a sporting culture where 'they know how to bring out the best,' Sundhage recalled.
Switzerland is different, with players that have experience and promise yet a tendency their coach sees of taking too few risks, being too 'correct.'
'You have to get crazy. That means you are going to make a mistake. And that is scary for a Swiss player,' she suggested.
'The biggest mistake you can actually do is not trying,' said Sundhage, who defied social expectations in her Swedish childhood to forge a career in soccer. 'Otherwise you will never ever find out how good you are.'
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