Magdalena Eriksson is combining her playing duties for Bayern Munich's women's side with a scouting role for the club's men's team — a crossover she has described as an honour, and one she hopes will encourage other clubs to follow suit.
Eriksson revealed the arrangement during an appearance as an analyst on Swedish broadcaster SVT, where she was covering Bayern's Champions League fixture against Real Madrid. The disclosure drew considerable attention, which she addressed in a first-person piece published by the Guardian.
"Why is this such big news? It shouldn't be," she wrote, before acknowledging that she understood the reaction and welcomed the encouragement it had generated. Her instinct, she said, is that both the sport and its institutions are ready for women to take on substantive roles in the men's game — and that football, in fact, needs them to.
The dual role places Eriksson in unusual territory. Active players rarely take on formal scouting responsibilities within their own clubs, let alone across the men's and women's structures simultaneously. That Bayern have arranged it this way says something about how the club regards her analytical thinking, and perhaps also about how seriously they are approaching the integration of expertise across both setups.
For Eriksson, the value appears to run in both directions. In the Guardian piece, she framed the responsibility not merely as a service to the club but as preparation for her own future — a way of building the kind of experience that is difficult to accumulate once a playing career has ended and the structures of football have moved on without you. The scouting work, she suggested, is deliberate investment in what comes next.
Her wider point carries weight beyond her own situation. Women who have played the game at the highest level bring knowledge that is directly applicable to talent identification, tactical analysis, and player development across football as a whole. The barrier has rarely been competence; it has been opportunity. Eriksson's arrangement at Bayern, however it was arrived at, represents the kind of structural opening that is still far from routine.
Whether other clubs draw the same conclusion remains to be seen. Eriksson said she hopes the visibility of her role encourages them to think differently — to consider offering similar opportunities to women who are motivated to build careers in football beyond playing. The reaction to her SVT appearance, largely positive according to her own account, suggests the appetite exists. The question, as ever, is whether institutions will move to meet it.