NWSL's Chicago Stars name Martin Sjögren as new head coach

New York Times

18 hours ago

The NWSL's Chicago Stars have named Martin Sjögren as the club's new head coach, the club announced Wednesday.
Sjögren, who is currently head coach of Hammarby in Sweden's top women's flight, will join the club in January. Until then, Sjögren's longtime assistant, Anders Jacobson, will serve as interim head coach through 2025 before moving into the role of first assistant next year.
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The club selected Sjögren and Jacobson after an 'extensive' search that began after the Stars parted ways with former head coach Lorne Donaldson in April.
Sjögren, a former footballer from Sweden, has coached across various Swedish clubs over the past two decades. The 48-year-old is best known for his six-year run as head coach of the Norwegian women's national team, which he led through two Euros and one World Cup.
'I just felt it was the right timing to go abroad again and to get a new challenge,' Sjögren told The Athletic in an exclusive interview on Monday. 'I've always been, more or less, interested in the NWSL. It's a very competitive league. It's maybe the most competitive league in the world.'
The club had been in talks with Sjögren 'for quite a while,' the coach said. The club underwent an extensive interview process that included various rounds of interviews with more than 60 candidates from around the world. The team said it prioritized candidates with top club and international experience, and experience managing a roster diverse in age, experience and culture.
Sjögren said he became increasingly more interested in the role with every interview, realizing his vision was aligned with the club's aspirations. It helped, too, that Chicago was willing to be flexible with his start date. He wanted to finish Hammarby's season, which concludes in November, and had family-related reasons for staying in Sweden until 2026.
Stars general manager Richard Feuz said in a statement Wednesday that Sjögren and Jacobson's appointment was 'the result of a rigorous, data-driven hiring process and deep discussions about our soccer identity, methodology and long-term vision.
'We were not just looking for top-level coaches but for people with exceptional human values, leaders who align with our ambition to build a high-performance environment rooted in trust, unity and a true sense of family,' Fuez said. 'Martin and Anders will bring a wealth of international experience and are fully committed to developing a clear, intelligent and forward-thinking style of play that emphasizes control, collective ambition and attacking football.'
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Chicago currently sits 13th in the 14-team NWSL table with a 1-5-9 record. The club has been without a permanent head coach since it abruptly fired Donaldson.
Donaldson, the former head coach of Jamaica's women's national team, joined the Stars in 2024. He led the club to that year's playoffs, a vast improvement from their last-place finish the year before. He was fired after starting the season with only one win in six games. The Stars have not won a game since.
Following Donaldson's departure, the club elevated then-first assistant coach Masaki Hemmi to interim head coach. When Hemmi left the club in July for an opportunity with Lexington Sporting Club's women's team in Kentucky, Ella Masar stepped in as interim.
The Stars outlined a process of succession that will see Jacobson assume the role of first assistant upon Sjögren's arrival in January. Masar, who played against Sjögren and Jacobson while at FC Rosengård, has moved into the role of assistant coach. Assistant coach Karina Báez and goalkeeper coach Brenton Saylor will also remain on staff.
Sjögren is a former footballer from Sweden with an extensive coaching resume that includes spells across various Swedish clubs. His coaching career began in 2004 with Östers IF Dam and included periods with LdB FC Malmö, where he won the Swedish league in two consecutive seasons (2010-2011), and Linköpings FC, which went undefeated in 2016 and won the Damallsvenskan league.
His success at the club level earned him a call from Norway's national team. He joined them as they were preparing for the 2017 UEFA European Women's Championship. Under his leadership, Norway qualified for the 2017 Euros and the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, where it reached the quarterfinals. After failing to progress past the group stage of the Euros in 2022, Sjögren resigned.
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He returned to Sweden by 2023, where he joined IFK Norrköping's men's team as an assistant coach. Last year, he joined his current club, Hammarby, which ended the 2024 season with a third-place finish, qualifying the team for the Champions League. The club currently sits second in the Damallsvenskan league with a record of 9-3-2.
Sjögren has worked closely with Jacobson for over a decade. Jacobson got his start as a youth coach in 2007 and later joined Sjögren in 2013 as his assistant at Linköping. The pair would remain together across several chapters of their careers, including in Norway, which they both left in 2022. Jacobson later worked as head coach of Linköping FC in 2023, and more recently was the head of analysis for BK Häcken.
Sjögren said he hopes to bring a newfound sense of stability to Chicago by combining what the club already does well with his own experiences across Europe. 'We want to create something sustainable that could be successful,' the coach said. 'You can always choose to put a lot of money in and buy the best players, but when the money runs out, then you don't have a team anymore. I want to build it in a different way.'
He spoke about his vision for blending the European style of play, which leans on tactical and possession-oriented football, with the physicality and directness of American football. It's something he already sees happening within the league, especially as more European coaches and players enter the NWSL. He also plans to leverage his two decades of lessons learned as a head coach.
'With all these years within the business, I think I can rely a lot on my leadership, because I've been through so many different situations, both good and bad,' he said, 'and hopefully (I'll) become an even better leader when I move into a new league with a little bit of new experiences and new challenges. But I'm really looking forward to beginning to know the NWSL a bit closer.'
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