Elisabet Spina is the Sporting Director at A.C. Milan Women where she is leading the side to their most successful season since the team was established in 2018. Before joining A.C. Milan, Elisabet spent 10 years working in men's youth football, first as a coach then as Director of the youth academy, including a spell working in America for Nike across a variety of Colleges and Universities for both women and men’s teams. After spending a few years in the United States, Elisabet returned to Italy to take up a teaching position in the Technical Sector of the Italian Football Federation. From 2018 to 2020 Elisabet served as the Head of A.C. Milan Italian Academies, the Research & Development Area and the Women's teams before transitioning into her current role as Sporting Director alongside gaining her Sporting Director certification. 

Elisabet’s success is not just limited to off the field but also on it as well. Having started playing football aged ten in a men’s team in Viareggio, Italy where she grew up before moving to mainland Tuscany to play with a women’s team at the age of 14. After a year in the youth academy, Elisabet made her debut for Agliana in Serie A Women (Serie A femminile) and represented Italy at the U-19 European Championship paving the pathway for an illustrious career in Italy and Switzerland where she won the Italian Cup in 2010 with Reggiana and competed for the Swiss Women's Football Championship (Swiss One) and Women's Super League with Rapido Lugano.

Throughout her playing career, Elisabet continued to study and gained a Bachelor’s degree in Sports Science and two Master’s degrees in Preventive, Compensatory and Adapted Sport and Sports Science for Elite Athletes, obtaining an unprecedented impressive perfect score in her final exams. Alongside her impressive academic achievements, Elisabet gained her UEFA B Coach's license and UEFA A Professional Coach license becoming the first woman in history to receive the highest score on the final exam in the process.

In this episode of In Her Corner, we take a deep dive into the career and life lessons that have contributed to Elisabet’s success and her experience of working with football legend Paolo Maldini to further A.C. Milan’s success for both the men and women’s game.

You can listen to the trailer for Elisabet’s episode using the player below:

Elisabet’s full episode will be released at 1pm GMT on Wednesday 17 March and will be available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other major streaming platforms.

Podcast theme track by Wayne Urquhart  and Mix Engineering by Nick Murphy.