The First-Ever To Win The Best FIFA Award Three Times

England head coach Sarina Wiegman has tonight become the first coach of either gender, to win The Best FIFA Award on three separate occasions, a record she previously shared with Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp, the winner in successive years in 2019 and 2020.

Having previously won The Best FIFA Women’s Coach Award in 2017 and 2020 while in charge of the Netherlands, the Dutchwoman took charge of the England women’s national team in September 2021 and has won 25 out of 29 matches so far, retaining the UEFA Women’s Euro title she won with the Netherlands in 2017 with a different national side, both firsts in the history of the game themselves.

Wiegman finished ahead in the voting of Lyon’s Champions League winning coach Sonia Bompastor, the first woman to lead a side to victory in the competition since 2009, and the winner of the Copa América Femenina, Sweden’s Pia Sundhage, the head coach of Brazil.

In fact, Wiegman has also become the first person to win The Best Award in any category three times. Cristiano Ronaldo (2016 and 2017) and Robert Lewandowski (2020 and 2021) share the honor of winning The Best Men’s Player Award twice but until Wiegman tonight, no-one had ever won the award in three different years.

Wiegman has also recorded the most top-three finishes in The Best FIFA Awards. Since the awards were inaugurated in 2016, Wiegman has finished among the top three in each of the last six years, winning three times, second in 2018 and 2019 and third in 2021. No other women’s coach had finished in the top three more than twice, Zinedine Zidane and Pep Guardiola are the only men’s coaches to finish in the final three on three occasions.

In the other categories, only Lionel Messi, among the finalists for The Best FIFA Men’s Player for the sixth time in seven years in 2022, has recorded as many top three finishes, winning the award in 2019, finishing second in 2016, 2017 and 2021 and third in 2020.

Unlike most other awards which are voted on by journalists, the FIFA Football Awards are decided on by a combination of different stakeholders within the game. The vote is split equally between the choice of every national team head coach (25%), every national team captain (25%), a group of media representatives (25%) and an online public vote (25%).

In less than eighteen months in charge of England, Wiegman has led the Lionesses to three trophies, retaining the Arnold Clark Cup for a second successive year this month in addition to the glorious triumph last summer in the UEFA Women’s Euro, the country’s first-ever major international trophy in the women’s game.

Next month, Wiegman could make it four trophies out of four when they face South American champions Brazil in the first-ever Finalissima. Such is the clamour around Wiegman’s Lionesses, the match will be the third successive sell-out for the England women’s national team at Wembley in nine months.

Only the FIFA Women’s World Cup eludes Wiegman. As coach of the Netherlands, she took the Dutch side to their first final in 2019, only losing to the defending world champions the United States, the side who also eliminated the Dutch in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic tournament, Wiegman’s only two defeats in major international tournaments.

Last October, Wiegman’s England defeated the world champions 2-1 at Wembley Stadium, her first major victory over the United States. Going into the World Cup this summer, Wiegman’s rampant Lionesess will be the side to beat and should they add the world title to their European title in Sydney this August, it is inevitable Wiegman will be returning to collect another The Best FIFA Award in 2024.