Women's EURO's golden trailblazers

When Pia Sundhage spoke after the Women’s EURO 2025 draw in December last year, her eyes burned bright. The excitement of leading the host nation Switzerland at a historic tournament was clearly evident. It is just the latest chapter in a remarkable story for one of the original pioneers of the women’s game.

Now a highly-respected and decorated coach, Sundhage celebrates the 50th anniversary of her international playing debut this year. That was in 1975 and nine years later she lit up the first women’s European football competition under UEFA’s auspices, triumphing with her native Sweden after a dramatic penalty shootout win over England in the two-legged final.

Sundhage scored the only goal of the game in the first leg in Gothenburg on 21 May, 1984. But when a Linda Curl effort levelled matters in the return leg played in heavy rain at Luton six days later, the game went to spotkicks. After Sweden keeper Elisabeth ‘Lappen’ Leidinge had given her team the advantage, Sundhage stepped up to convert the decisive penalty.

"I took the last shot. We won the final. It was a marvellous success," she recalls.

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Sundhage helped Sweden to runners-up spots in 1987 and 1995 and on the domestic front, clinched four league titles and four Swedish Cups with Jitex BK and her last club Hammarby. So highly regarded as a sporting role model, her face appeared on a Swedish postage stamp.

Finishing her playing career with an impressive 146 international games and 71 goals, she sought further challenges as a coach. Starting as a player-manager at Hammarby, she progressed via roles at Boston Breakers – where she won the WUSA Coach of the Year in 2003 – to head coach of the US national team in 2007. There she helped the team to two Olympic gold medals on the way to being named FIFA World Coach of the Year in 2012.

Taking charge of her native Sweden from 2012 to 2017, she led Brazil in the inaugural Women’s Finalissima in 2023 before taking on her current role.

These days, you will find Carolina Morace striding the corridors of the European Parliament after her election as an MEP last year. It is one of many achievements in a colourful life and career that has also seen her qualify as a lawyer, become the first woman to coach a men’s team in Italy and enjoy a successful spell as a popular, mainstream TV and media pundit.

It’s all a far cry from the day she joined her first club in her home city of Venice at the age of 11.

"I have a brother two years older who I was always having kickarounds with," she recalled. "I never had any problem being accepted by boys then, probably because I was always one of the goalscorers – even if I was the only girl, everybody wanted me to be on their side."

It was as a talented striker on the famous turf of Wembley Stadium in London that she produced a standout performance that is still talked about many years later. Scoring four of her 105 international goals against England in 1990, Morace remembered:

"My most vivid memory of the match was the last goal. I dribbled around a number of their players before scoring and the English supporters graciously cheered as it was a special goal."

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Morace continued to make headlines. She scored the first hat-trick at a FIFA Women’s World Cup in China in 1991, helped Italy to two Women's EURO finals in the same decade and was voted Player of the Tournament after finishing joint top-scorer in 1997.

She was Italian football's capo cannoniera – leading scorer – in 11 consecutive seasons from 1987/88 to 1998/99 and ran China's Sun Wen and Michelle Akers of the United States close in the greatest female player ever vote.

"Coming from a small country like Italy, that made me extremely proud," she said.

Morace coached Italy to two Women's EURO and went on to lead Canada and Trinidad and Tobago as well as AC Milan and Lazio. Becoming a FIFA ambassador, she conducted courses all over the world and has set up her own football academy.

Making her international debut aged 16, in 1994, Birgit Prinz was a born winner. A year later she announced her arrival on the European stage, coming off the bench in the 1995 final to make a decisive impact.

"I was so happy to get the chance to play in such a big game," she recalled. "I felt that this was a huge opportunity for me. And as the young player I was at that time I was totally optimistic that this was a winning situation for me. When I entered the pitch the game was 1-1. Two minutes later I scored the goal which put us in front. Bettina Wiegmann decided the game six minutes from time. Although the Swedish team scored a second goal, we won the game 3-2."

By the time the next decade was coming to a close, she was established as one of the all-time greats of the women’s game. Winning 214 caps and scoring 128 international goals, she added four Women's EURO winners' medals and scored in the 1997, 2005 and 2009 finals.

Prinz won the 2003 and 2007 FIFA Women's World Cups, not to mention three Olympic bronze medals, three FIFA Women's World Player of the Year awards plus manifold honours with Frankfurt including three UEFA Women's Cups, and the WUSA championship in her short spell in the United States.

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Hailed as one of the great strikers in modern football and currently starring for Manchester City, it was at Women's EURO 2017 where Vivanne Miedema enjoyed arguably her finest moment. After scoring in a 3-0 semi-final win over England, Miedema added another two in a 4-2 final triumph over Denmark as hosts the Netherlands claimed their historic first title.

Proving it was no fluke, she helped the Netherlands to a FIFA World Cup final against USA in 2019. Having previously played boys' football, at 14 Miedema signed professional terms with Heerenveen, making her debut aged 15 on 2 September 2011. Her first competitive Netherlands game came in a UEFA European Women's Under-17 Championship qualifier in April 2012, and naturally she scored.

Later, she was key to the Netherlands winning their first competitive female football title at any level, scoring the only goal in a 1-0 final defeat of Spain in the 2014 Women’s U19 EURO finals. At the age of 17, she made her senior Netherlands debut against Albania; a month later she managed a 16-minute hat-trick in a Women's World Cup qualifier versus Portugal, the first of Miedema's three trebles in their group campaign.

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Miedema was also central to the Netherlands reaching their first Women's World Cup finals in 2015, scoring all three in the 3-2 aggregate defeat of Italy that took the Dutch to Canada. Her tally of 16 overall equalled the European qualifying record for the Women's World Cup.

With a host of individual honours and records, the former Bayern München and Arsenal striker suffered an ACL injury that ruled her out of the 2023 World Cup. The first Netherlands goal of her injury comeback was crucial – a headed equaliser ten minutes from time away to Norway. The goal secured a 1-1 draw and booked an automatic place for the Netherlands at Women's EURO 2025, just as it seemed they were heading for the play-offs.

Only nine nations have players that have reached 100 women's international goals but Miedema is well on course to add the Netherlands to that list, with Birgit Prinz's European record of 128 a more than realistic target. Modest and humble in her approach she simply says: "Playing football is all I ever wanted to do." She admits: "I don't really set targets for myself… I just wait until people come up to me, and say 'Well this is what you need to break [that record]' and I'll be like, 'OK, let's get it out of the way and move on.'"

One of world football's foremost talents, Alexia Putellas is used to making history. On 6 January 2021 she became the first woman to score a competitive goal at the Camp Nou in a league game for Barcelona against her former club Espanyol. Afterwards she told Barcelona's website that the first game she'd ever seen at the stadium was a men's match versus the same city rivals when she was six. Her family would regularly travel to home games from her home town Mollet del Vallès, around 20 km from the city.

The lifelong Barcelona fan is grateful for the incredible success she has achieved in the game so far, captaining her club and country along the way, and has talked about what it takes to the reach the very top. "I was lucky that my family accepted everything I wanted to do. I remember a very beautiful childhood. I was playing football all day and I was having a good time," she said. "You do everything to perform better: you eat well, rest a lot, try not to do things that could injure you. You put all your focus on that."

Putellas was the first player to win the UEFA Women's Player of the Year award and Ballon d'Or Féminin twice in a row, and has since been crowned a world champion with Spain. In May 2021 the dynamic midfielder became the first player from her club to lift the UEFA Women's Champions League trophy as captain, and claimed an unprecedented treble of individual honours: UEFA Women's Player of the Year, FIFA Women's Best Player and the Ballon d'Or Féminin.

In 2022 she became the first Spain women's footballer to reach 100 caps, though the cruciate-ligament injury that ruled her out of UEFA Women's EURO 2022 was a huge blow. However, she was still named UEFA Women's Player of the Year once again, matching Pernille Harder's tally of two – but the first player to do so consecutively. That’s only part of her story, with many glorious chapters, no doubt, still to be written.

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