She wears a hat and is a cool sock! The goalkeeping coach of the women's national team was a world soccer player, five-time European champion and two-time world champion. Because she was also in the handball team until she was 16, she drew cards back then, as she tells blue Sport during a chat at the bar.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- Nadine Angerer is a two-time world champion, five-time European champion and has been goalkeeping coach of the Swiss women's national team since March 2024.
- Her career was decided by lot when she had to choose between handball and football as a teenager.
- She made her breakthrough in the DFB team in 2007 after her regular goalkeeper tore a cruciate ligament - and went on to keep a clean sheet at the World Cup, including a penalty save in the final.
Nadine Angerer is undoubtedly women's football's answer to Oliver Kahn or Manuel Neuer. A class goalkeeper, charismatic, ambitious, and in terms of titles, the now 46-year-old Angerer is far ahead of her male rivals. Her palmarès? Two-time world champion, five-time European champion, world goalkeeper of the year. And Angerer has been coaching the goalies of the Swiss women's national team since March 2024.
Handball or football? The lot has decided
Anyone who thinks this unprecedented career was a foregone conclusion is mistaken. Pure chance played a major role, as Angerer admits to blue Sport - or to be more precise: the lottery decided. The lot? Angerer explains: "I come from a very sport-loving family. My mother was a triathlete, my father used to play handball and I was always more into the ball. So I played a lot of tennis, handball and football." And at some point, when she was on the U16 national team in handball and football, she had to choose one sport, purely because of time - although she loved both. "And then I wrote handball and football on a piece of paper, closed them both - and let the lottery decide."
The lot was football. Angerer says: "It was fate, if there is such a thing as fate. It was probably meant to be."
Angerer has never regretted her decision. Even though she initially had to line up behind Silke Rottenberg, at least in the national team, and was merely a substitute at the 2003 World Cup title. Looking back, she says: "Of course I wanted to play and of course I gave it my all. Of course, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't unhappy. But I was lucky that I was playing for Turbine Potsdam at the time, and we were one of the most successful teams in Europe, winning the championship and the Champions League, so I was somehow able to compensate for that."
Her chance in the DFB goal only came after ten years as a substitute keeper, when Rottenberg tore a cruciate ligament at the start of the 2007 World Cup. Did she feel sorry for her rival? Angerer says: "Well, I wasn't happy. But I did think, oh, maybe this is another chance. And then I concentrated fully on the World Championships and then it went really well."
"If you open your mouth, you have to deliver"
Quite well? That is by no means an understatement. Angerer went six games without conceding a goal and saved a penalty in the final from Marta, arguably the best female footballer in the world at the time. Angerer: "When you open your mouth as wide as I had done years before and always said: I want to play now, then you have to deliver. Of course, that also puts a lot of pressure on you."
As we know, she handled it well, even though she says in retrospect that she sometimes felt the games were "pure horror" because she felt so much pressure not to make a mistake that would have jeopardized the team's success. "I can still remember the final when three minutes had been played and I thought: Oh shit, still 87 minutes to go! That was an amazing experience." That's why Angerer still says today: "I was exhausted after that World Cup. I was glad when we got home. I was completely empty."
Angerer: "... but I can celebrate"
Despite all her ambition in the battle for the number one spot, Angerer was a great teammate who knew how to raise the spirits. She was sometimes referred to somewhat casually as a "party animal". "So it's important for me to just let all five be straight from time to time. That doesn't mean that I go to a bar every night, but that I do things completely away from football, do crazy things and don't think about football. But I can party," she says and laughs.
Her career, which has also taken her to Bayern Munich, Sweden and Australia, has certainly not been affected.
