With the appointment of the previous coach of the FCZ women, there is a culture change in the Swiss national team. A highlight awaits Grings this summer: the World Cup in New Zealand.
Soon on the sidelines of the Swiss national team: Inka Grings.
Inka Grings recently said in the NZZ when asked whether she would find it appealing to look after a national team: “If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said no. But you mature. Today I would find such a position interesting.”
Now it is definitely: According to information from “Blick”, Grings, 44 years old, will be the national coach of the Swiss women’s soccer team; on Monday morning it will be officially presented at a press conference of the Swiss Football Association (SFV) in Bern. She succeeds the Dane Nils Nielsen, who is retiring for family reasons.
German follows Nils Nielsen: FCZ trainer Inka Grings takes over the national team https://t.co/dY7GxBvV7S
— Blick Sport (@Blick_Sport) November 20, 2022
Grings is a courageous and logical choice by the decision-makers in the SFV. Since she took over the women’s team at FC Zurich in spring 2021, her team has actually only done one thing: won. FCZ won the double in 2022 and is playing in the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. Last but not least, it is thanks to Grings, this demanding personality who demands a lot from the club and the players.
She has also coached men’s teams
Her previous work was like a letter of application for higher tasks – she even knows men’s football, in which she was the first woman in history to look after a club in the top four German leagues in 2019 at regional league club SV Straelen. Now it has become the Swiss national team, which also means promotion, especially with the participation in the World Cup next summer in New Zealand and because she previously worked in the financially and structurally weak Women’s Super League.
Finances are a facet that should not be underestimated when it comes to filling the position of national coach. The association had also exchanged views with prominent and established coaches from men’s football, such as René Weiler, who became champion in Belgium and Egypt. Weiler honored the interest, but a coach of his caliber will not work for a fraction of the salary of Murat Yakin, the men’s national team coach. Grings moves in a different sphere in monetary terms.
Ever since it became clear that Nielsen was leaving the national team, there had been heated discussions about what kind of coach this team needed. One that relies on self-responsibility like Nielsen? Or someone who pulls the reins and rules with a certain severity like Nielsen’s predecessor Martina Voss-Tecklenburg, who had fines handed out when players were late for dinner?
Grings is an interesting, exciting choice
Several squad members wanted a mix of these two philosophies, which Captain Lia Wälti, for example. Grings is unquestionably closer to Voss-Tecklenburg than Nielsen in character and way of working. Grings has a long history together with Germany’s current national coach, both in the national team and in FCR 2001 Duisburg. They were once a couple privately. And it was Voss-Tecklenburg’s husband Hermann Tecklenburg who employed Grings in Straelen. For the Swiss women, their employment should mean a change, a change of culture. In the FCZ, not all players initially got along with their brash nature.
With her qualifications and her impressive palmarès as a player and recently also as a coach, Grings is an interesting and exciting choice for Switzerland. That shouldn’t have done any harm Tatjana Haenni, the outgoing women’s football director of the SFV, has known and appreciated Grings for many years: When Grings enriched the FCZ from 2011 to 2013 as a world-class striker, Haenni was her president.
Grings will be in charge of Switzerland for the first time when the team comes together in February, when the selection will also play an international match.