Secrets of World Cup finals
Only a few can say they've been involved in one, and coaches, analysts and players give an insight into what it takes to try and win the biggest match of all...
Sunday marks the ninth official World Cup final in the women’s game since FIFA first sanctioned the tournament under their name in 1991.
32 years ago, it was eventual four-time winners USA who took the glory in China, beating Norway through a late Michelle Akers goal when games were just 80 minutes.
The tournament has evolved throughout the decades, to full 90-minute matches, expanded tournaments and the introduction of larger coaching staffs and playing squads.
One thing though in the previous eight finals that has remained the same is the desperation to win and to get your hands on the ultimate prize for any footballer.
Only the privileged eight can say they’ve done it, starting with April Heinrichs back in 1991, with either Ivana Andrés or Millie Bright the latest come Sunday evening.
So, what is the secret behind winning the biggest match of all? The highest pressure a player or a coach will feel through a career, the detailed preparation that goes into clinching success, some of those who have come out on both the right and the wrong side of a World Cup final tell all.
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The first two coaches to go head-to-head in a final were USA’s Anson Dorrance and Norway’s Even Pellerud, in China in 1991.
It would be the start of a close rivalry between the two nations during the 1990s, with USA winning out on this occasion, but Norway returning to knock them out in the semi-finals four years later and go on to lift the trophy themselves.
“I respect Even immeasurably,” says Dorrance. “We played against each other a lot as players. We all speak post-game and in this profession, we’re all so defensive, we all try to protect ourselves with excuses. Dragging the referee, some way of protecting our fragile egos.
“Even never did that, we played them before that tournament and beat them soundly and after the game he came up to me and recited every element we did right in the game. He complimented us and I remember thinking ‘oh shit, this guy is going to be hell’, because he had all kinds of excuses he could have made to me, which is usually what happens, but he came up to me and said everything we did well. I knew he would be hell to deal with and he was, a great coach.”
“We didn’t do it with a lot of sophistication. We did it because we were fit…”
The friendly rivalry spilled over into the World Cup, when the pair went up against each other in the first ever official World Cup final, with Akers’ late goal the clincher in a game which could have gone either way.
“I respected him from day one and in a way, he really helped me because I’ve never listed excuses for any of my failures, and what’s critical about that is you create a personal narrative, but it has to be based on truth and not excuses. For me, Even taught me a lot of lessons, he was missing two or three of his best players, I knew he was, and he could easily have brought that up but he never did, he knew all of our secrets, he could recite our game to me and I still have huge respect for him now. People hold a mirror up to us and allow us to see where we are and where we need work and Even for me was one of my early transparent critics in a good way and I’ve had nothing but respect for him ever since.
“Just to make sure I was equally transparent, after the final I conceded Norway had a lot of the game and Even said ‘Anson’s right, we played a good game but USA had the best World Cup’. The final was the heroics of Michelle Akers, but I appreciated his transparency, a gentleman I really respected and that’s how we did it. We didn’t do it with a lot of sophistication. We did it because we were fit, we were street-fighters and we had incredible players who could beat anyone off the dribble.”
While Dorrance would leave his post as USA head coach before the next tournament to be hosted in Sweden in 1995, Pellerud remained in his role with Norway, looking to go one better than four years previous.
After dispatching the US in the semis, Norway was faced with Germany in the final in front of 17,000 supporters, and Pellerud recalls how what happened in 1991 and the lessons he took from Dorrance’s side were the “pretext” for his own side’s success four years later.
“We were really pissed off,” he recalls. “Not because we lost, but because it was a poor game and we had to improve the team to improve the game. We felt really good over those three years leading up to 1995, especially the last 12 months before the tournament.”
To try and replicate the strength and physicality the USA had in 1991, Pellerud put his side up against a boys team and a second division men’s side in Norway before the team left for Sweden, looking to replicate the USA’s high press game which had been their undoing.
“If you’re talking technical secrets, I think our style was very different. Very direct, wanted to press high, very good at counter attacks. We worked very hard on second balls, we had a strong defence, we wanted to be compact as a team. The key was the way we wanted to play, that was the biggest change from 1991 to 1995.”
Pellerud was dealt a blow when he lost his captain, the influential Heidi Store, who was sent off in the semi-final win against the USA. Describing her as a “highly experienced leader”, Pellerud admits it could have “distracted” preparations for the Germany game, but their mental preparation and determination to turn around the result from 1991 meant it didn’t have a negative effect.
“The mental side is just that,” he smiles. “Sometimes you are just in the moment, but we had a lot of experience, we had won trophies. We had to cope with different things, whether it was heat, jetlag, wherever we travelled, whatever was in our way.
“We had all the assets that counted and for us it was more the feeling of being prepared, feeling we were in a good place, being in good form going into the tournament, so the state of mind was easy for us. We did have a mental trainer for a while, but there was good chemistry between the players. We had speed, we had goals, fast wingers, a solid defence, so we were confident and comfortable. The game today is more three dimensional, there’s a digital world the players are always connected to, what fans and the media think about them, I think that is a different challenge now.”
On Store’s absence, he adds: “She was with us that day when we had our walk and talk before the game, and no one was worried. We were in that state of mind where we felt nothing could beat us, and that’s a very rare feeling to have as a coach.”
The game itself threw up a curveball, heavy rain for large parts of the encounter, which played into Norway’s more physical approach.
Two goals within three minutes towards the end of the first half from Hege Riise and Marianne Petterssen sealed a first and only world title for Norway.
“That was one of those tournaments where the balance of the team, tactical and mental, was such we knew it was almost impossible to beat us that day. We had a tournament where everything went our way apart from the red card. That’s what stands out, going out in the day time before the game started, but then by kick off it was heavy rain. We were going to press high, we knew Germany wanted to play out, but they couldn’t find a way past the halfway line because we pressed so high and I think we coped way better with the conditions than they did.”
Check out WFC’s dedicated World Cup section for analysis of every single game of the tournament, plus several features on some of the biggest names at the tournament.
Fast forward 16 years and things, as Pellerud alluded to, had certainly changed. The women’s game was increasingly in the public eye and social media was beginning to take off, offering a different challenge to both players and coaches.
But another element of the game which was fast evolving was analysis, with nations now spreading their wings when it came to ensuring they planned as much as possible, watching as many rivals as they could to understand the intricate details of what they would or could be up against.
When Japan stunned the world to beat the USA in a dramatic penalty shootout in Germany that summer, Shota Mishio was the man tasked with the analysis of opponents.
He’d been with the JFA [Japanese Football Association] since 2006 and still works for them today, based in England for six months currently as their representative liaising with the International Olympic Committee ahead of next summer’s games in Paris.
A possession-based team, Norio Sasaki’s side had to face England, Germany and Sweden just to get to the final, and Mishio offers an insight into how they prepared for a success which is still one of the tournament’s feel good stories in its three-decade long history.
“I would look at everything,” says Mishio. “I would look how an opponent would attack in the final third, how they would defend in the defensive third, particularly in transition because we were good in transitions.
“One thing I would really look at was how to get the ball back, because that’s what we were strong at, and how we could attack them in transition. Looking at individual players, what their strengths and weaknesses were. For example, the USA was one of the teams very good with speed, counter-attacking and transition. Ourselves, France and Brazil were more technical, whereas USA, Germany and Sweden had really strong speed and power. We knew we had to stop that to win, so we analysed how to stop them building up from the goalkeeper.”
After beating Germany in extra-time and then coming from behind to beat Sweden 3-1 in the semi-finals, Japan was faced with a USA side hell-bent on winning their first World Cup for 12 years, after Germany had lifted the trophy on both occasions during the 2000s.
“In endurance, Japan is better than USA in my opinion, so we wanted to be patient, not rush and step by step we got them…”
They also had strength in depth in attack, with Megan Rapinoe, Lauren Cheney and Abby Wambach starting the final, yet still had Alex Morgan and Tobin Heath to come on as substitutes.
The lack of clarity over who would start given the options available proved problematic for Japan, but Mishio did everything he could to be prepared for whatever they threw at his side.
“When we looked at the USA, they had Alex Morgan and Abby Wambach, good target players up front,” he recalls. “They had Rapinoe and Heath, who were good technical plyers. We knew they were good in transitions and had targets up front, that was their strong point I thought.
“We tried to press from the front side as much as we could, but actually in the final in the first 20 minutes USA attacked really well and we struggled to stop it as we expected to in the middle third and final third. We suffered from a lot of shots from the USA, but after that we were more patient and we started to keep the ball longer.
“In endurance, Japan is better than USA in my opinion, so we wanted to be patient, not rush and step by step we got them, we created chances. It was about ‘what is our strong point? How could we make our own chances?’ We knew if we kept the ball, maybe our endurance would show and that’s how we grew into it, especially when it went to extra-time.”
Working on endurance paid off. Not many sides out-last the USA, let alone when they’ve fallen behind in extra-time, but Japan had the energy to keep going and got their reward when Homare Sawa turned home a corner in the 117th-minute to send the game into a penalty shootout, which Japan would win.
“We were very small, our players were very small compared to USA, Sweden, France and Germany. We knew the best way was to play our tempo. I think Japanese players’ sprint distance is not so high, but we had the highest low speed movement, jogging speed, so we worked hard on endurance, to keep moving and keep our tempo but in a way which meant we could last 120 minutes if that’s what it took, so we could protect the ball for that time. [Aya] Miyama, Sawa, they were good at their look around ability, they could read a game so well.”
Mishio adds Japan didn’t have the money for the technologically at the time which would allow to feedback analysis live to Sasaki on the touchline, so would only get the chance to rush down the stand for an analysis catch up at half-time and full-time.
What it left behind was a USA side desperate to turn a rare final loss into a win. Come 2015, the then two-time champions hadn’t lifted the trophy for 16 years, and had turned to new head coach Jill Ellis and assistant Tony Gustavsson to return them to the top of the world.
As Ellis puts it, USA “pulled” a tough group, which saw them draw Australia, Sweden and Nigeria, but Ellis saw it as a chance to build into a tournament she admits her side started slowly.
“People said it was the group of death,” Ellis recalls. “So much of it is the message and the narrative you want to shape. In 2015, I said to the players ‘people can call it what they want’, I knew we’d be battle-tested because we had three good teams. Get through this and we’d be ready for anyone.
“We started slow, it wasn’t pretty, it was just finding ways to win. We didn’t want to be bubbling up in the first game, it was telling the players we will get better and I think our best game was the semi’s against Germany.”
After winning the group and then beating Colombia and China to reach the semi-finals, Ellis and her side were faced with one of their great European rivals and their own legendary head coach in Sylvia Neid.
At 0-0, Celia Sasic missed a penalty before a spot-kick of their own was converted by Kelley O’Hara with 20 minutes before and Carli Lloyd sealed their place in the final with five minutes to go.
“It all came together and it gave us a huge boost for when we stepped into the Japan game,” says Ellis. “We went through every mechanic of how we’d force Germany and pin them in, we trained that massively. If you watch it back, they can’t find their defenders playing out from the back. It gave us momentum, I remember [Nadine] Angerer’s quote after the game, ‘it felt like a bullet train coming at us’. I knew coming out of that we felt pretty good and we approached the final with the mood of punching them in the face. Start quick, finish strong.”
It was old rivals Japan in the final, the team which had bested them four years previous, and had again enjoyed a strong run to the final, beating England in dramatic fashion in the semi-finals.
But this time it was a different story, with Ellis’s side scoring an incredible four goals inside the first 16 minutes, and Lloyd getting a historic hat-trick as Japan failed to deal with the pace and intensity USA came out of the blocks with.
The first goal, a set-piece finished off by Lloyd was a pre-planned move executed just three minutes into the final.
“You see me on the bench tapping Tony. We trained that corner once in practice, we animated it so they could see it in action and it was almost like perfect. The players knew the coaches had done their homework. The message at half-time was this isn’t over, we all know the game. I said to them, ‘fantastic where we are, but it’s 0-0, win the next 45 minutes’.
USA would go on to win 5-2 to seal a third world title, and Ellis and Gustavsson would find themselves back in the showpiece final four years later again, with Ellis looking to become the first head coach to win back-to-back World Cups, this time with European champions Netherlands in their way, coached by Sarina Wiegman.
“FOX were carrying our games and they put out an ad which said ‘defending their crown’ and I called them because I told the team ‘we’re not defending anything’,” she recalls. “Nobody was taking 2015 away from us. We were a new team and I didn’t like their narrative, that was over and done with.
“We were protecting nothing, we were attacking something. 2015 had been 16 years in the making, it felt more of a relief for those players like Abby [Wambach] and Hope [Solo], the fans who had waited a hell of a long time. It inspires the next generation; those things ran through my head. In 2019, it was satisfaction because we came through the 2016 Olympics which didn’t go well. We rebuilt, changed system, deepened our team and it was a more satisfactory feeling.”
Netherlands themselves were in their best spell of form too. Wiegman had guided the host nation of Euro 2017 to a shock success, and backed it up with a first World Cup final after beating Sweden and former winners Japan along the way.
“We broke it down from the team tactics, defence, offence and transition to individual preferences and tactics…”
Their opposition analyst for the tournament was former player Nangila Van Eyck, who set about looking at how they could stop the USA, working under a coach in Wiegman known for her attention to detail.
The level of analysis had moved on so much by now that come 2018 Van Eyck was one of eight working across the analysis department as either opposition analysts or scouts.
“My role was to get as much information on any team possible, as much as we could,” she says. “You don’t always know which team you will compete against, but we had a database with all the reports and analysis.
“We had some rules. They divided up the scouts and talked to me about how we were playing back then, otherwise you can't do actual analysis if you don't know how your own team is playing. It's just based on what you see, you have to interpret some of the actions of other teams, compared to your own team. In the group stage we just analysed every team, every game. Sometimes it was one team, sometimes it was both. Sometimes you would go with a colleague, but a lot of the time I would be alone to analyse one team. We knew what was asked of us from the staff, so we knew what to analyse. We had our iPads, everything was well arranged.”
When USA played England in the first semi-final, the Netherlands hadn’t yet booked their own spot in the final, playing Sweden 24 hours later, but all the analysts had to do their due diligence anyway knowing whatever happened they would play one of them in the final game, whether it was the final itself or the third-place play-off.
“We had three scouts analysing the USA in the semi-finals and I was one of those three,” Van Eyck recalls. “From team tactics to individual tactics and preferences of USA players. What are the specific qualities we had to watch out for, where are maybe the chances we could hurt them?
“We broke it down from the team tactics, defence, offence and transition to individual preferences and tactics. For example, the centre-back and full-back, they had a specific co-operation either in the line or between the lines. They were the specific things to look at.”
She adds, “Our task was get any information we can get. Of course, you have to choose important moments, all those analysis went to the Head of Analysis and they would discuss all the details. We were just providing information, information to the staff and of course Sarina and the other coaches. What information they are going to give to the team, that was not directly our information, they would break down our information.
Van Eyck says “you just hope” when it comes to giving the accurate information for what may unfold on the day, while USA’s scouts themselves had spent time the night before the final analysing the left side of the Dutch defence and a discomfort in aerial battles, which led to the penalty which saw Megan Rapinoe score the opener.
Facing the penalty was Netherlands goalkeeper at the time Sari van Veenendaal, who recalls how Wiegman and the staff ensured they were “very well prepared” for what to expect, and believes they did well to contain them until the penalty was given in the second half.
“We respected the USA a lot but we knew we had a chance to win a World Cup final and we gave everything for that,” says the now retired former keeper. “Preparation was everything for us. We changed our formation a little to defend a little more. We knew the USA always scored in the first 20 minutes, so we knew it was important to not give it away in the first 20 minutes. They scored a goal every game, so we knew what to expect from that side.
“Even years later I still think how they were much better, but if we didn’t concede the penalty it could have been different. We knew in finals anything can happen, I’m still very proud of what we achieved, it was a good tournament for us but losing the final will always be hard.”
On how she herself could try to deal with USA’s attacking options, she adds, “I watched all their clips. I would do that any important game but I watched them and I knew the kind of way they wanted to attack, whether they shot from the side or the middle, from distance or from close range. We looked at everything we could find.
“We had a very strong staff with Sarina. She prepares everything with every small detail, there’s nothing we didn’t know. For me as a goalkeeper, they gave me everything I needed. That’s one of the special qualities of Sarina, everything was prepared. We knew it would be a different occasion, but we were prepared for that, we knew we had a chance and with that attitude we started the game.”
Van Veenendaal admits keeping a normal routine even on the biggest day of their careers is vital to any preparation. She was rooming with Jill Roord and they played games through the day to keep themselves occupied.
“When I woke up, I was very happy I’d had a good night’s sleep,” she smiles. “That part was done. After that you try to do the normal things, food is at the normal time, you have a slow walk, the last meeting, nothing really changes.
“You create some habits and those stay. The day is very special, very important, but you just know your routine, you keep it the same. It’s a shitty day to be honest, but you have to get on with it.”
USA went on to add a second soon after when Rose Lavelle burst through the middle and fired past van Veenendaal from the edge of the box, giving Ellis her second world title and USA their fourth.
“You can analyse a lot and prepare a lot and obviously the role of a coach too is to organise a team in such a way you are hopefully 100% prepared, but the thing with football you don't know how a game is going to go,” says Van Eyck. “The one thing I looked at was Alex Morgan specifically, you just see things she does and you try and give that back to the team. I'm sure the coaches and the players knew the qualities of both the team and the individual players. Football is a game of moments and emotions. Maybe Stefanie [Van der Gragt] would analyse the game after the moment, why did I make that move? The referee could give the penalty.
“The second goal, if I remember, it was a transition moment, there was a lot of space in the midfield and with Rose Lavelle, you know her qualities. I was watching the game in the stadium and I was like 'oh no', because you don't want her in that position, and the players knew that, but sometimes you can't perform the specific actions the game is asking for. Sometimes it works out, but this time the USA was a bit better than us.”
Ellis recalls how different the game was to four years previous when the game was all but over after 16 minutes, but she knew if her team kept playing the way they were the experience and quality they had would tell in the end.
“In the Netherlands game I knew we were playing well,” she says. “It was going to come and it didn’t matter if it was the 46th minute, 89th minute or 106th minute. We spoke about tactics, but keep the pedal down and your chance will come. The message here is teams will hang with you for 70, but not 90, because of depth and the tempo we play at.
“Two very different finals and it’s that hand on the rudder, what you say in the moment. For a coach, it’s always keeping positive. You don’t go in and blast your team in a big game. It’s how you sell the story, coaches get that.”