She’s not nervous on the sidelines, says Voss-Tecklenburg, “but it’s incredibly tense.” She is also regularly strengthened by her husband: building contractor Hermann Tecklenburg flies to the games. Of course, she also draws her other composure from the feeling that her team has impressed everyone so far – which was not necessarily to be expected.
Voss-Tecklenburg: “I was always very dominant”
“We’ve gotten closer together over time. The coaching team involves us and we give them feedback,” says VfL Wolfsburg’s vice-captain Svenja Huth. In the long preparation, there had been a few crashes: “Load control” became a nonsense, the players demanded more units on the pitch.
Voss-Tecklenburg himself also says with a view to the quarter-finals at the 2019 World Cup and her coaching staff: “We first had to have clarity with ourselves before we demand clarity from the players. It’s a process we all went through. ” Before that, as a trainer, she was mostly alone, as a national coach in Switzerland with her assistant for a long time. “I was always very dominant. I wanted to do everything alone as a coach, from start to finish,” she admits.
She now leads a support team. This consists of her confidante Britta Carlson and the other assistants Thomas Nörenberg, Patrik Grolimund, Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker and goalkeeping coach Michael Fuchs. “The quality here from those responsible for sport is so good and well-established. That gives me much more security as a trainer,” explains Voss-Tecklenburg today.
Today she is handing over responsibility
Dealing with the team is “less the raised index finger. You still have to remain constructive and clear when things don’t go well.” When talking to the players, who assume a high degree of personal responsibility, there is always a dialogue with the question: “What is your perspective?”
A greater mutual understanding has also developed through the team council with captain Alexandra Popp, Almuth Schult, Lena Oberdorf, Svenja Huth, Sara Däbritz and Lina Magull. “That makes us more secure. We’ve also reduced a lot of communication to the essentials,” says Voss-Tecklenburg.
In the TV documentary “Born for this” about the DFB women’s path to the European Championship, it is expressed that “it didn’t always go the way we wanted, that the cooperation wasn’t always right,” confirms Wolfsburg’s Lena Lattwein. “Among each other, but also between us and the coaching team. These difficult phases did us good, we managed to talk ourselves out, to find ourselves again.”