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Few people on the Earth are as qualified as Emma Hayes to be the US women’s national team coach.
The Englishwoman built a juggernaut at Chelsea. She gained experience for that job by coaching and consulting in the USA, where she helped to assemble a Western New York Flash team that won the last WPS championship. She’s a frequent presenter at the annual United Soccer Coaches convention, also in the US. No one has a better understanding of where US players stand in comparison to their international peers.
So when the news emerged that Hayes was leaving Chelsea and is probably headed to the US to take over as the coach of the four-time world champions, the question wasn’t “Why her?” The question: “Why would she take the job?”
Soccer can be cruel to national team coaches. Women’s soccer can be especially cruel. US women’s soccer can be even worse.
In the minds of the US women’s soccer media and fans, nothing is ever the players’ fault. It’s never the faulty development pipeline – which, in the US, is a serious problem that has been exacerbated by the financial demands of current national team players (women and men) at the expense of any future players. It’s always the coach.
After all, national teams have more leeway to replace the coach than they do to replace the players, who are bound to their countries by birth or citizenship. The US national team’s players, thanks to decades of media adulation, have even greater leverage than their counterparts elsewhere. Players can offer a firm stamp of approval, as they did when Vlatko Andonovski was hired in 2019. But if a coach rocks the boat, the players may pull out the knives and make a coach walk the plank. In 2014, US Soccer’s denials that a player revolt led to Tom Sermanni’s dismissal came across as the sound of a federation that protested too much. Jill Ellis had to survive an uprising in order to maintain a job she did brilliantly, balancing the egos on the team and masking some weaknesses with sound tactics in order to win a second straight World Cup in 2019. Even Pia Sundhage, who rebuilt the team after it crumbled in the 2007 World Cup, had her share of critics.
Hayes may not face the same restrictions as her predecessors. Under previous labor agreements, US Soccer kept a core of players on salary, and changing up that core was more complicated than simply saying it’s time to bring in Player X to replace Player Y. That’s no longer the case under the new CBA, and Hayes has more freedom than previous USWNT coaches to pick the players she wants. She may also benefit from arriving at a time in which some of the old guard is on its way out – Megan Rapinoe has ended her international career, and Alex Morgan is one of several players whose roster spots are surely not guaranteed moving forward. The next year or two will be one of the few times in US women’s soccer history in which competition for places is truly wide open.
But Hayes’ choices will still have limits that she didn’t face at Chelsea, where the club’s deep pockets and financial commitment allowed her to assemble a virtual All-Star team. Last year, Chelsea had nine players in the Guardian’s list of the world’s Top 100 players. Pernille Harder and Magdalena Eriksson have since gone elsewhere, but Hayes simply added Ashley Lawrence, Mia Fishel and Catarina Macario.
With the USWNT, Hayes will choose from a large but muddled talent pool full of players who struggled in youth international play and looked naive at the World Cup this summer. Making the wrong choices wouldn’t just weaken the lineup on a given day. It would weaken her political capital in an atmosphere in which fans, players and the media can quickly turn against her.
Hayes’ place in England is secure. She’s leaving a place in which she’s revered for one in which she’s respected – but so was Vlatko Andonovski.
Hayes has been a serial winner at Chelsea, building a team and a club in her own image. “[Hayes] built everything at Chelsea,” Katie Chapman told the Guardian in 2021. “From having the kit washed to having food, to having our own building, to having our own training and pitches. Now, it’s an absolute professional setup but everything’s been a fight over the years to do that. She’s always looking at how she can help everybody else.” Will she have the same kind of oversight and influence with US Soccer as she did with Chelsea?
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To an up-and-coming coach, the US head coaching position may be a dream job. It could just as easily be a nightmare. Why would an established coach like Hayes take that chance?
But while Hayes’ choice looks perilous, it’s also one that’s difficult to question. Her father recently passed away. A national team position, freed from the grind of domestic and European league play, may offer her more of the work-life balance she has publicly lamented that she doesn’t have today. If moving across the Atlantic seems best for her family, then it’s the right choice, period.
She would also be well compensated of course, and could end up making seven figures if she does take the job. She may also orchestrate a turnaround that would add to her legacy. Where there’s a crisis, there’s also an opportunity.
And if Hayes made bad decisions on a regular basis, she wouldn’t have compiled such a glittering list of accomplishments. And if anyone can survive the pit of vipers into which a US women’s national coach is thrown, it’sHayes.
US supporters should consider themselves very lucky. This is a job that would scare away a lot of good candidates, with good reason. But one of the biggest authorities in the sport isn’t afraid of the challenge.
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