Marisa Wunderlin in person "I am driven and have a restlessness in me"

When Peter Zeidler left FC St. Gallen, many fans wanted Marisa Wunderlin to succeed him. In SPORTLERIN magazine, the coach talks about the differences between men and women in goal-kicking drills, her first salary, clichés and swallows.

Marisa Wunderlin, what do you say when people ask you what your job is?

For about two or three years now, I've been saying with conviction that I'm a football coach.

How do people react?

Interested, but no longer surprised. Until two or three years ago, many people were irritated and sometimes asked how I earn my money. On the one hand, this is probably due to the fact that I now answer with more conviction and don't actually have any other jobs. On the other hand, it's also because the visibility of women's football has improved. A few years ago, there were no professional female coaches in Switzerland, so it wasn't taken seriously. Sometimes I was even asked whether you had to have attended courses to coach women's football.

So did you write in your friends' books at school that you wanted to be a football coach one day?

No, more like helicopter pilot or farmer. The option of being a football coach or even a footballer didn't even exist in my head back then because I'd never seen any. I also only started playing football in a club relatively late.

Why?

I wasn't aware that girls' football and women's football existed. At school and elsewhere, I was told from time to time that football wasn't for girls. What's more, my parents weren't very interested in sport in general. We then won the national CS Cup title once with our school class and received a season ticket from FC St. Gallen as a prize. That was FCSG's second and, to this day, last championship season in 1999/2000, when I was 12 years old and finally hooked. I didn't go to my first regular training session at a club until my 13th birthday.

How satisfied are you with your career as a footballer? And what was your career like?

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I started out at FC Wittenbach and then made the leap to the NLA within four years thanks to the great support of the Thurgau Sports School, among other things. But I was often injured, had almost too much bite and ability to suffer, which was often not healthy. In 2007 I went to Rot-Schwarz Thun and studied in Bern, with Thun I was relegated from the NLA for the third time (laughs). I later went to FFC Bern, but I ended my career at 23. I wasn't good enough to get back into the line-up in the foreseeable future after setbacks.

When did you discover your talent as a coach? And what did this path look like?

I completed my first course as a player at FC Staad when I was 16 and helped out with training sessions from time to time. I then ran regular training sessions in Bern while studying sport and playing football myself and started as an U-14 coach at YB when I was 21. In 2013, I went to Lyon and was able to work professionally in the youth sector there for the first time. At the time, Lara Dickenmann was playing in Lyon, who fortunately took me into her flat share.

How much did you earn there?

900 euros a month. And there were meal vouchers of maybe 300 euros, so that you reached the minimum wage in France. Fortunately, I don't need a lot of money to live on. Nevertheless, I was unhappy as a person in Lyon. Geographically so close to Bern, but culturally it still seemed far away, and I had difficulties adapting. That's why I returned to Switzerland after an exciting internship offer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Sport and was able to start as an assistant coach for the women of FC Zurich at the same time.

What was the salary there?

As an assistant, around 800 francs a month. The salary situation in Swiss football has improved a little in recent years, and I've had the privilege of being one of the few in Swiss women's football to be able to live on it since 2023.

And you're still a Super League expert on the TV channel blue Sport.

Yes, but I'm not there often. I don't have the time. It's important to me to help make women more visible in sport. But it's enough for me to be on TV every few months and suggest new women as experts every six months (laughs). I don't need or want to position myself as a TV expert, especially as I have a very fulfilling and intensive job as head coach at FC St. Gallen.

People who know you well always mention your boundless energy.

I believe that if you have a clear "why", many people follow suit. I am driven, I have a restlessness in me. That is perhaps my greatest ace, but it is probably also my greatest weakness. I can't stand spending hours discussing problems in meetings. My approach is: discuss, decide, implement.

If money, power and vanity aren't important to you, you might struggle with the football business from time to time, especially in the men's game.

Absolutely. It's often not my world. And this attitude has made me realize more and more what I actually want. I want to spend my energy and time with people who have similar values and / or the same "why" as me. Values are very, very important to me. Much more important than the logo of a world-famous football club, for example.

Are you radical in this respect?

That's a good question. Probably yes, because I have principles and am very consistent. At FC St. Gallen, I've found a club and an environment with completely normal people, who tick like me when it comes to dealing with people, where money and power don't play an overriding role. Of course there are also different opinions among the management. But the values fit. In football, you quickly find out which clubs and clans you don't want to work with. But that's my attitude, which doesn't necessarily apply to many others.

We once spoke to cabaret artist Bänz Friedli in SPORTLERIN about women's football. He's a big fan and said that women's football is better, more honest, purer and that there are no guys like Neymar. Won't that change when more money comes into play?

I firmly believe that women's football will retain some great characteristics. There may be women who try the odd swerve, but overall the mindset is different. We talk about cleverness in the FCSG women's team. It's about not sprinting to get the ball in the 93rd minute when we're leading 1-0. Or about taking a free kick short in this situation and not hitting it into the penalty area. But a lack of fair play beyond that? It will never be the same in women's football.

Why not?

I have read many studies and have educated myself almost excessively in this area and also in terms of leadership. Fairness and justice are terms that are mentioned more often by women when it comes to values and attitude in life. I don't want to say that men are not fair or unfair because of this! For me, it rather means: yes, of course women want to win. With maximum cleverness? Of course! Win with injustice? No, not that. With men, regardless of football, competitiveness is often highly weighted. Many boys, for example, like to go to sport because they want to compete.

And women?

It has been shown that girls, for example, mainly take up football because they want to celebrate success as a group and help shape something. But you know what? In principle, I don't like generalizations and pigeonholing at all. It's super important for me to say that there are also a lot of men who would never attempt a swallow to score a penalty. And a rethink is slowly taking place.

What do you mean by that?

I am a huge advocate of process-oriented work. It shouldn't just be about the result, but above all about the way you go about it. This has been proven to help with mental health in our increasingly fast-paced world. Clubs like Bodø/Glimt in Norway also rely on this model for the men, and they are successful.

Can you describe this philosophy for us?

That would fill a book (laughs). I'm currently giving a lot of talks on leadership, at banks, hospitals, in very different areas. Female leadership is also important to me. It's important to me that you take people with you. We define the culture together. The culture defines our behavior. Our behavior leads to results. Sounds simple, doesn't it? I like to break down complex content to get people excited about topics that are close to my heart. I probably acquired this as a lecturer in Magglingen.

Which aspects are particularly important to you?

The team concept and the values within this process-oriented approach. A transformational leadership style helps to make this a success. There is also the transactional leadership approach. For me, however, this is an approach of power: I pay, you deliver. I can't do anything with that. Behind every salary, however abstruse it may be, as is sometimes the case in men's football, there is a human being. Today's world is ever faster and more uncertain.

It certainly is! What are your findings?

If we simply demand results from our counterparts in a fast-moving business in an increasingly uncertain time, this has been proven to increase the feeling of pressure, and mental health suffers at the latest if the results are not as desired for a while. That's why it makes more sense to take people with you, to set an example, to light the fire from within and not to function hierarchically. But I know that my expectations of associations and managers are perhaps exaggerated because I have dealt with these leadership issues so intensively. I shouldn't expect everyone to have dealt with them in such depth.

Are you a perfectionist?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I already feel sorry for you when you get the interview back from me after the proofreading process (laughs).

You also spent a year as athletics coach for the SC Kriens men's team. What do you think are the most important differences in the work between men and women?

Oh, now we're drifting into clichés. There is no such thing as male or female behavior. But it has been shown in games that women have a greater need to be involved. They want to understand, which is why they may question a lot of things at the beginning. After that, however, they are more independent. Let me paint you a somewhat exaggerated picture: during a goal-kicking exercise in football, the women ask which foot they should shoot with, where the defender would come from in this situation, whether it is better to shoot with the full instep or the inside of the foot, and so on. So that they can do the exercise best. The men get there and just shoot before they think about what the actual goal of the exercise is. Our current athletics trainer at FC St. Gallen otherwise works full-time with NLA ice hockey players. He recently told me that he would prefer to take 20 percent of the weight off the men's barbell training and add 20 percent for the women.

Does that mean that men tend to overestimate themselves and women underestimate themselves?

That's not a new insight. National volleyball coach Lauren Bertolacci once told me that she also has the feeling that we as coaches give women a lot more information. Do we perhaps overcoach women to some extent, precisely because they want to listen and understand so well? Could this reduce creativity and confidence in our own decisions? I also think that with men as coaches, it's more about competence. There are coaches, even in the Super League, who place little value on empathy or interpersonal relationships. The players simply have to deliver. That would never work in the same way with women. In my opinion, if you don't have any social skills in women's sport, you have no chance as a coach.

When Peter Zeidler's departure from the FC St. Gallen men's team was announced in the summer, the "St. Galler Tagblatt" newspaper conducted a survey: you were named as the clear number one candidate to succeed Zeidler, with 47% of all candidates - ahead of YB champion coach Raphael Wicky and many other prominent coaches. What does that tell us?

I heard about it at the time and thought it was funny. It means that things are really different in St. Gallen than at most other locations. But that wasn't an issue for the club or for me. It wouldn't have been wise either, we were already preparing for the new season and I wouldn't just leave. I've been head coach of the women's team for three years, we've built up a lot together and want to challenge the bigger clubs in the league. Back in Peter's time as head coach, it was briefly discussed whether I would like to work on his staff.

Would you see it as an opportunity to work with the men in the Super League?

This question, perhaps also the word "opportunity", bothers me a lot. It's inappropriate, it's the wrong approach. It's interesting that the media even talk about an "opportunity" when, for example, a woman receives an offer to coach a team in the first division or at U-18 level and she has previously coached a women's team at a higher level. These words, often chosen unconsciously and not maliciously, show that it will be a while before a different way of thinking prevails in football.

If you worked in the Super League, you could do a lot for the recognition of the women's movement in football.

I hear so often that I should get involved somewhere to make things better. Act more as an expert, train with the men, be part of working groups, support an application for more money for this or that project. That doesn't mean that I'm particularly great.

But rather?

That unfortunately there are still far too few women who could take on such tasks. But also that we only consider women for such tasks when we feel certain that it will be good enough. That's why we urgently need to do something to get more women into the system! Don't just keep asking the same three or four women for everything. In the last 15 years, apart from me, there hasn't been a Swiss woman who has been head coach in the top division for more than six months. Just imagine that. You have to fundamentally ask yourself why this is the case and actively do something to change it.

Why is that the case?

We hardly train any women as coaches. There are already far too few, and it will be much worse in the future if we don't change something. There are so many girls coming into football, but we don't have enough female coaches. You see, that's exactly the point I made earlier: the problem has long been recognized, but there's debate and talk and more discussion, and people are involved who have absolutely no idea about women's football. The issue is clear: you have to invest time, money and resources, be open to input and also hand over decision-making powers to people from women's football at associations. And above all, you have to really want it!

Give us an example.

Fränzi Schild, the head of the Bern-Jura regional association, and I recently submitted an application to FOSPO's Lab 7x1 and were able to raise a large sum of money for women's football coaching. This will enable us to make a difference to the regional associations in eastern Switzerland and Bern. I have repeatedly suggested this approach and others like it to the SFA over several years, but ideas and concepts from small women's football get lost in the din of big men's football if the decision-makers are not aware of the needs of women in sport.

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