When Vera Pauw returned to the Netherlands after the 2009 Women’s European Championship, she entered her office at the Royal Dutch Football Association expecting plaudits. The pioneering coach, a key force behind the establishment of the women’s Eredivisie, had just guided the national side to the semi-finals of their first major international tournament.
Instead, in a nation long agnostic to the female game, she was met with silence. “Nobody in the association ever congratulated me,” Pauw recalled on Friday. Within six months the manager who laid the foundations for women’s football in the Netherlands had resigned, just as her hard work was bearing fruit.
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