Three weeks ago, Holland and Denmark were virtually no one’s favourites to win Euro 2017. On Sunday evening two coaches who have built careers on doing the unexpected will delight in confounding the experts by leading their teams out for the final in Enschede.

A game replete with subplots will have particular resonance in, among other places, Herat, Nuuk, Barcelona, Oregon and St George’s Park. While Sarina Wiegman, Holland’s 47-year-old coach, has taken the unprecedented step of honing her skills in the men’s game, Nils Nielsen, her diminutive 45-year-old counterpart, is a rare Greenlander excelling in the Danish football world.

Wiegman – who oversaw her country’s 3-0 Euro 2017 semi-final win against England – completed a year’s internship as a coach with Sparta Rotterdam’s senior men’s teams after becoming the third woman in the Netherlands to gain the pro licence qualification. She subsequently served as assistant manager of the club’s B side and continues to combine her national role with involvement in Sparta’s academy.

Nielsen’s achievement in beating Germany, the eight-times European champions, 2-1 in the quarter-finals has placed women’s football in the unique position of dominating in Nuuk. Greenland’s capital is a long way from Afghanistan but its inhabitants now know all about Denmark’s Herat-born striker Nadia Nadim, who fled her homeland, becoming a refugee following her father’s execution by the Taliban. She now plays in Oregon, for Portland Thorns.

If this capture of Inuit imaginations and Nadim’s extraordinary odyssey are examples of the female game’s inexorably extending reach, Wiegman feels the insights gained during her time with Sparta Rotterdam’s men could serve as a useful development template for more women’s coaches.

If there is every reason for the Football Association to encourage Mark Sampson – now contemplating his future – to continue in the post until the next World Cup, in France in 2019, his potential female successors would arguably benefit from emulating Wiegman’s example.

The front pages of Friday’s Dutch newspapers certainly suggested her experimental internship had paid dividends. In a watershed development, female footballers dominated the news in the Netherlands.

Who, only last month, would have believed that lengthy odes to Daniëlle van de Donk, the Holland and Arsenal midfielder, could relegate match reports of Utrecht’s Thursday Europa League men’s qualifying draw at Lech Poznan to truncated, down-page status.

After spending more than any other European country on women’s football, the FA had hoped England would triumph on Sunday evening. Instead, they were put in their place by Van de Donk and her talented team-mates, including Lieke Martens, Barcelona’s new £180,000-a-year left-winger. By way of consolation six of the Holland squad play professionally in the English Women’s Super League and a record live television audience of four million watched the semi-final on Channel 4.

Mention of that figure temporarily cheered up Sampson following a tournament when the possibly over-confident coach had ruffled a few FA feathers. If some of his controversial jibes, most notably labelling the France coach, Olivier Echouafni, wet behind the ears, were injudicious, he definitely kept viewers engaged.

“Incredible,” he said. “Even four years ago no one would have believed that could happen. The players have moved this England team into a different stratosphere but there’s still a hell of a lot of work to do, the key is getting more young girls playing.

“Our talent base is not where we want it to be but it’s improving; we now have to make decisions about getting to the next stage. About how England can be the best in the world.”

The good news is that his best players – including Lucy Bronze, Jordan Nobbs and the prolific Jodie Taylor – should feature in France 2019. Taylor hopes Sampson does too. “Mark’s absolutely the right guy to carry on,” said the Arsenal striker. “He’s been fantastic. You’ve seen how far we’ve come under him in a short time. We’re all devastated we didn’t win Euro 2017. We have a lot more to do together.”