Junior Senior with Swedish Hanna Bennison and Caroline Seger | Inside UEFA
Hanna Bennison is only 19 but has been an international for almost three years and scored in Sweden’s win over Switzerland last week in his first major international tournament.
However, 37-year-old Caroline Seger is European football’s most played player of all time. She set a new record in 2021 by making her 215th Sweden appearance and is still going strong 17 years after her UEFA Women’s EURO debut in 2005.
Growing up in a country where women’s football had tremendous success, as a child, Seger was able to visualize a future in the game, but still lacked obvious female role models to look up to.
Below, she compares her experiences with her teenage teammate, and the couple reflects on the importance of being an example for future generations.
Do you remember your early experiences with football?
Victory: It has always been football for me, and I knew very clearly what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I played in a team whose colors were blue and yellow, so I had an early dream of joining the national team and becoming a professional. It’s so many years ago now but there are of course many sweet memories from when I grew up and how you came to the training plan; there is only one where I come from so to get there by bike, meet your friends and often watch the men’s team while they play and eat hot dogs in the stands. It was a really great atmosphere. I come from such a small village, so I loved going there and just sitting in the sun and watching good football.
Bennison: I started playing football when I was five, and I also wanted to become a professional football player, but it might come a little later, maybe when I was around 11 or 12. But since then I have always wanted to play football fully. time.
What were your role models – how did they differ?
Victory: When we were growing up, we did not have the benefits of watching a lot of women’s football on TV and really watching our role models play football on TV. I did not really look at any particular men’s player I admired. I think that this generation that is coming now has a completely different advantage where you can find someone to look up to in all parts of the world, and it can be female football players who did not exist then in my time. I wish I had it but it did not exist for me.
Bennison: When I was younger, especially when I moved to Rosengård, it was Helena Backman, who played in the first team at that time, so I watched her a lot. And of course Marta when she played in the Swedish Allsvenskan. And then, lately, it’s been a victory.
Victory: I forced her to say that!
And now you are role models for little girls …
Bennison: It’s a bit difficult for me because I’ve always had the players who play here in the first team as role models, and to have come this far myself means a lot. It can be difficult to realize that you yourself have become a role model. But it is of course great and really cool that you can be that for others.
Victory: In these times, it’s cool to be a role model while being a member of the women’s national team, because we are heard, we are seen and we are there and do it. And younger girls like Hanna can see from an early age that it is entirely possible to reach the first team and realize their dreams of playing internationally. If you look at me, as someone who has had a long career and can be here and make a difference for young girls and the next generation that comes through, hopefully I helped a lot so that the new generation that comes after us has probably seen everything that is possible, and feel that you can literally go as far as you want. The possibilities are endless. So, it’s cool for the next generation too.
Caroline, what’s your advice to Hanna and the next generation watching you on TV now?
Victory: An advice I would have said to myself if I had started if my career would be, which is the hardest part, just to enjoy the journey. There is a lot of pressure, demands and stress when you are in a tournament. And to succeed, you have to perform at a very high level, so the tendency is that you forget to enjoy the experience on the road – because not many players get to experience tournaments. So if you can get the mix of putting in high-level performance, but also enjoy it along the way, you’re halfway there.