The seven-time Women’s Super League champion guided the U.S. to Olympic gold this year, but could she ever enjoy such success with her homeland?
Emma Hayes is the most outstanding coach England has produced in the women's game, a manager who essentially built Chelsea from the ground up, won seven Women’s Super League titles, seven domestic cups and reached a Champions League final, turning the Blues into the dominant force in the domestic game. For some, then, it was unfathomable that she would leave that job to manage the United States women’s national team, not the Lionesses.
Instead of her next step being to lead her home country on the international stage, Hayes took over the four-time World Cup winners earlier this year and only added to her already immense reputation when she delivered Olympic gold in Paris just a few weeks later. It’s extremely likely that, in the years to come, the 48-year-old will stand in between England and a major title, with them possibly crossing paths at a future World Cup.
Before that becomes a possibility in 2027 though, the Lionesses will go up against Hayes for the first time on Saturday, as the USWNT visit Wembley for a friendly of the highest profile. It's an occasion that has prompted excitement but also questions, again, of why the Football Association (FA) let the best coach in English women's football take charge of a team that will be a genuine rival for the Lionesses in the battle for big titles.
But that shouldn't be the question; this isn’t a case of asking how the FA let this happen. The fact of the matter is that being the head coach of the USWNT is the biggest job in the women’s game and it’s one that, for a number of reasons, it makes more sense for Hayes to occupy than the England hot seat.
GettyHuge opportunity
Let’s talk about prestige first of all, because there is no job that has more than the one Hayes took up this year. No team has won the World Cup more often than the USWNT, with the U.S. as a country having been a huge trailblazer in the women’s game for a very long time.
“First of all, this is a huge honour to be given the opportunity to coach the most incredible team in world football history,” Hayes said upon being announced as the program’s next coach in November 2023. “No one ever knows what the right time is in life for anything, but it's the feeling I have for this team and for a country that I have a great connection with and a history with. I've dreamed about doing this job from my days as a coach in my early twenties. You can't turn the USWNT down.
“We've won a lot at Chelsea and I'm very proud of that, and I'm proud of the fact that I can leave that club in a better place and one that I hope continues to compete. But for me, the challenge of competing for World Cups, for Olympics, the dream of coaching a team that I've always wanted to get the opportunity to, I simply couldn't turn it down.
“I understand how important the team is to the people and culture of the United States. This is not just about the soccer community and I fully understand the prestige and place that the team has in U.S. society. I've lived it. I remember being a young coach working my way up through the system in the U.S. and watching all those young girls aspire to play on the USWNT. For me, the honour of building on that legacy is part of my motivation, no question.”
Her quotes were littered with an understanding of just how big the USWNT job is and, in that sense, Hayes taking it was always a perfect fit because there is arguably no coach in the women’s game with a bigger profile, not just for her achievements with Chelsea but for the way she continues to push the sport forward in England in terms of increased investment and innovative thinking.
AdvertisementGetty Images Sport‘Great connection’
But another of the big reasons why Hayes was drawn to this role and why she suits it was also mentioned frequently in that interview – because of her connection with the U.S. as a whole. It’s a connection that goes back years, to even before she had stepped foot on American shores as a young coach looking to forge her way to the top.
Speaking to in 2022, Hayes recalled how there were “zero opportunities” and “zero role models” when it came to women’s football in England when she was growing up. However, the 1999 Women’s World Cup completely changed her perspective.
The event was hosted by the U.S. and its final would boast the official world-record crowd for a women’s game until that was broken a whole 23 years later by Barcelona at Camp Nou. The image of Brandi Chastain celebrating her title-winning penalty is iconic, and the tournament as a whole changed the entire sport. “I didn't know what a female football player looked like until 1999,” Hayes said. “That and that generation, they were the first role models for me.
“My father went to Atlanta and he went to the games,” she added. “I'll never forget, he called me from his hotel and he said, 'Emma, you will not believe it. There are thousands of people going to a [women’s] football match and they idolise these players'. I was like, 'Really, Dad?' He said, 'You have to be in America. This is where you have to be'. And that was in 1999.”
Not long after that phone call, Hayes would indeed cross the Atlantic as she made the first steps in what has since become an incredibly illustrious coaching career. It’s a move that would strengthen her affection for the U.S. massively…
Made in the USA
Hayes might’ve been born and raised in England, but her coaching path was kickstarted by her move to the U.S., and it’s no wonder that she has such an affinity for the country today. In her early twenties, she landed in New York with only a thousand dollars in her pocket and quickly set about making her mark in football overseas.
“The culture shock for me was I just couldn't believe how much football was being played everywhere, on fields, at these little youth clubs with hundreds and thousands of kids and, more importantly, a split, an even split between boys and girls,” Hayes told . “It was so shocking for me. I was coaching boys’ teams as well, which I really loved, and I remember, within 12 months, I got an opportunity to work for the Long Island Lady Riders. They'd sacked their coach and this little 25-year-old was sort of in a position that went, 'I'll do it'.”
The Lady Riders were in the semi-professional W-League and Hayes would be the youngest coach in the division, but would still go on to be named Coach of the Year in her first season. The following year, in 2003, she became head coach of Iona College's women's team and spent over two years there before deciding to return home to England, and to London, where she was Vic Akers' assistant at Arsenal.
Hayes helped the Gunners achieve an unprecedented quadruple and was part of what remains the only English women’s club team to become European champions – but she wanted more. When Akers left his role in 2008, she was offered the chance to replace him and turned it down.
“I realised that trouncing teams 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, 7-0, 8-0, it just didn't stimulate me,” she explained. “It wasn't enough. At that young age, I felt like I needed to be pushed again and taking the hard decision to go back to the U.S. was, for me, the right decision.”
GettyUnfinished business
And so back to the U.S. Hayes went. It was there she felt, as her father had told her in 1999, she had to be if she wanted to coach in a competitive, challenging and exciting environment in the women’s game, and so it’s hardly surprising that, despite so many years away from the U.S. while in charge of Chelsea, she still harboured this immense connection to the country.
In 2008, Hayes was announced as the new head coach of the Chicago Red Stars, a founding member of Women's Professional Soccer (WPS), a league that would precede today’s NWSL. There, she drafted future USWNT icon Megan Rapinoe straight out of college; she coached more soon-to-be World Cup winners in Carli Lloyd, Jess McDonald and Whitney Engen; she signed three England internationals, in Karen Carney, Katie Chapman and Anita Asante, to give them a taste of life in the U.S; and she coached other stars names too, such as Brazil legends Formiga and Cristiane, Australia goalkeeper Lydia Williams and Kosovare Asllani, the talismanic Swede.
But despite the star-studded squad, things didn’t work out for Hayes in Chicago. This was no easy job. She was building a franchise from scratch, she was doing so much more than just putting a team together, and she didn’t get the time to really build it all up. “That was a whole new process that, from a learning perspective, is one I took forward with me,” she told the podcast. “It was good experience, really, really good experience.”
Thirteen years on from being sacked by the Red Stars, after incredible success in England, it’s no surprise that Hayes jumped at the chance to go back to the country she loves, but also the country she failed in when given her first big shot in a professional league. She had unfinished business. After winning Olympic gold earlier this year, she's already set about putting things right when it comes to her story in America.
