Pia Sundhage was the Swedish coach during four championships between 2012 and 2017, where an Olympic silver from 2016 was the biggest success.
But one of the team's star players during this time, Nilla Fischer, now paints a negative picture of Sundhage's leadership in the book "I didn't even say half".
According to Fischer, Sundhage immediately got clear favorite players while other ungiven starters received tougher treatment. Among other things, she talks about how Sundhage talked to the players on an airplane during the ongoing World Cup in 2015.
"Just mean"
"Victory, are you sitting well? Fia, is everything okay? Emma, I don't give a about you. And Nilla, you've got your own line, I see, good." I don't know if she's joking, but Emma Berglund has gone in and out of Sundhage's lineups and now it feels like our head coach is raving about it. And trying to make a fun thing out of the fact that it is more important that we starters, or "the stars" as she calls us, sit better on the plane than the others on the team. If it's a joke, it's a terribly bad joke and just mean.
During Sundhage's last championship, Euro 2017, Fischer also thinks that the match reviews have become increasingly worse.
"If her match briefings have been paltry since she took over as head coach, they have become even more devoid of content now. Despite the fact that we are facing a European Championship premiere and are up against the reigning Olympic champions, there is not much that can be compared to a tactical review. Sometimes I wonder if we even have any real tactics in the national team," she writes about the meeting before the match against Germany.
Sundhage's response
Pia Sundhage responds to the criticism from Fischer.
"This is Nilla's truth. I have a different experience, a different story. Sad that during her time in the national team she experienced it this way", she writes in a text message to SVT Sport.