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“If one young player says that, I think 80 percent of people think, Oh, what an arrogant player. She did nothing until now. How can you say something like that?” says Alexandra Szarvas, a former coach with the Swiss Football Association. But neither she nor anyone who has worked with Sydney Schertenleib, the NXGN 2026 women’s winner, shares that view. In fact, their opinion is quite the opposite.

Making such a statement to the Swiss media was remarkable in itself. With a population of around nine million, Switzerland has never been a dominant force in world football. In the history of the Ballon d’Or, only eight Swiss men have ever been longlisted for the award in its 70-year history, and no Swiss woman has yet received a nomination for the Ballon d’Or Féminin, which was introduced in 2018.

“Normally, for a Swiss guy or a Swiss girl, you have to say, ‘She’s absolutely crazy when she says that,’ because we are a small country,” explains Daniel Gygax, who coached Schertenleib during her time in the FC Zurich youth system.

However, anyone who has seen this gifted teenager in action—whether it was her debut for the Switzerland senior team at 17, her move to Barcelona shortly after, or even before that—would understand that Schertenleib’s ambition, though bold, is not unrealistic. With her extraordinary ability and relentless dedication, her dream seems attainable.

“She sometimes says things like that but she does everything to reach that goal,” Szarvas notes. Gygax agrees, adding, “When you saw her in the past, when you see her at the moment, how she plays with such an easy style of football, I understand her and how she talks. She trains with Ballon d’Or winners, so why not have a dream like that?”