On Saturday, Chelsea announced that manager Emma Hayes will step down at the end of the season after 11 years at the club.
Hayes’ reign, during which Chelsea have won six Women’s Super League (WSL) titles, five FA Cups and two League Cups, will end so she can pursue a “new opportunity outside of the WSL and club football”.
The same day, The Athletic broke the news that sources briefed on the hiring process — speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect their positions — had confirmed Hayes would be taking over the management of the U.S. women’s national team (USWNT).
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The Athletic’s Charlotte Harpur, Meg Linehan and Adam Crafton spoke with Sophie Penney about the appointment on the dedicated women’s football podcast Full Time Europe.
Listen in full to the episode below, on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or read the edited conversation below…
Sophie Penney: Instant reactions?
Charlotte Harpur: Shocked initially but also sad. Hayes is a fascinating person to talk to and the WSL will be poorer without her.
Meg Linehan: Her name had been coming up but the timing was surprising.
Adam Crafton: Impressed. This is arguably the plum job in women’s soccer, so to have an English coach taking that job, (I feel) a big sense of pride. The USWNT had a poor World Cup. Everyone’s looking at them thinking, “How are you going to respond to this?” And they’ve gone out and taken the very top of the market. Fair enough!
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Penney: With Hayes set to replace Vlatko Andonovski — who left in August after the team’s earliest World Cup exit — can you give us some background on her management style?
Harpur: Hayes was born in Camden, north London. She’s a grounded person, very close to her family and her two sisters. She learned European studies, Spanish and sociology, so she’s quite a worldly person as well. She did a master’s (a postgraduate degree) in intelligence and international affairs and once applied for MI5, the UK’s counter-intelligence and security agency.
She started in the U.S. in 2001 and became manager of the semi-pro side Long Island Lady Riders, who were part of the USL W League, and then she became head coach at Iona College in 2003. Hayes came back to the UK in 2006; she was an assistant at Arsenal and was part of the coaching team that won the Champions League under Vic Akers in 2007.
Hayes returned to the U.S. in 2008 and managed Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) side Chicago Red Stars with her Chelsea assistant Denise Reddy — that relationship is key. After Hayes was fired from the Chicago Red Stars in 2010, she worked for the family business: a currency exchange.
Hayes joined Chelsea in 2012. Eleven years and 13 major trophies later, she’s won the WSL title for the last four years.
When you think of Chelsea, you think of Hayes as part of the club’s identity. On the pitch, standards are high; she’s tough on her players. She’s a winner and tactically astute, and is known for getting the best out of her players.
Hayes is very clever and savvy with the media and has a good relationship with them. When she wants a message (put) out, Hayes will make sure she has a line for you. When had aeroplane cancellations in Lyon, Hayes was the first one to say, “Come on the team flight, we’ll get you back on on the private plane.”
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After the 2022 FA Cup final, I was walking down Wembley Way at about 10pm and Hayes was outside with her son Harry and said, “Come into the after party, get your wristband on.” That’s Hayes.
Penney: Can you explain why this move is such a big deal?
Crafton: It’s a huge deal internationally. We may see U.S. Soccer agree to equal pay for the women’s coach role. For the USWNT coach to be on the same as the USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter — this would be a really landmark moment in sport.
It will create very interesting conversations. England manager Sarina Wiegman might look at Gareth Southgate and think, “Well, if the U.S. are leading the way on this, shouldn’t our country be doing that as well?” It has the potential to create a significant precedent, especially when you’re looking at pushing $2million (£1.63m) a year, which is a significant commitment.
Penney: What more can you tell us about how the deal was done?
Crafton: This process has been ongoing since the World Cup. The U.S. have looked at various candidates but they managed to keep Hayes a secret regarding the extent of the conversations they’d had with her.
Equal pay, if it transpires, will probably be debated over the next few weeks. But U.S. Soccer wouldn’t have wanted to do it just for the sake of it being a landmark statement. It had to be the right candidate for them to justify that since you’re more than tripling the previous coach’s salary.
And what is U.S. Soccer’s plan if more money is going into Hayes’ salary? Is there still going to be sufficient funding for academy coaching of women’s teams and facilities?
Meg Linehan: There is an expectation from players that their coach should be paid market value. Why is the USWNT coach making one-third of what the USMNT coach is considering the results of the two teams? It’s a natural extension of the conversation that we’ve had for a couple of decades around equal pay in the U.S.
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Harpur: The timing of it was a shock to Chelsea staff and players. Most of them found out in the dressing room an hour after the Aston Villa game on Saturday — which Chelsea won 6-0. Then the club statement was released.
Crafton: Chelsea were under the impression this was going to get out and it’s hugely destabilising to have someone as embedded as Hayes leaving. They felt that their relationship with Hayes was sufficiently strong that they could get ahead of that story. I am speculating but I can’t imagine U.S. Soccer would have been thrilled; the Chelsea statement signposts where she’s going given it said the job was outside of club football.
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It doesn’t appear that the thrust of the deal is completely over the line and U.S. Soccer probably would have wanted to ‘own that moment’ more.
Linehan: You can imagine U.S. Soccer would have wanted a big announcement, but how do you maximise that when Hayes is still a coach at another club? So you’re going to have to do it in two stages by saying: “We’ve got her. We’ll see you again in May/June 2024.”
Penney: How is this being seen from the U.S. side?
Linehan Generally, it is seen as ‘landing a big fish’. You have to have a certain personality to want to do this job, knowing what the expectations are and who the big characters are.
It’s going to be a very different moment in time compared to 2019 (when Andonovski took over from two-time World Cup-winning manager Jill Ellis). It’s more tense, the Olympics are coming up. Hayes’ background in the U.S. is helpful, but there is a sense of having an outsider coming in to figure out how you fix things…
Crafton: There is some uncertainty over the next six or seven months leading up to the Olympics. Chelsea want Hayes exclusively focused on the rest of their season, trying to win the Champions League and a fifth consecutive WSL title. But the intention is for Hayes to be there for the Olympics in some capacity — it remains to be seen whether that is as head coach. Could it be she sits in the stands observing the first few games?
Linehan: There’s also a potential risk of frustration with players who will want to see an immediate turnaround from the World Cup and make a statement at the Olympics, even if it’s not as important. The timing of this implies that the bigger project is the World Cup in 2027. That is a valid decision for the USSF (U.S. Soccer Federation) to make but that doesn’t mean that the players want that.
Penney: What does Hayes need to fix with the USWNT?
Linehan: The USWNT — and the USMNT, actually — don’t necessarily have a recognisable style of play. Hayes is known as someone who will just figure out what each game needs and that is the opposite of what the mission is: to figure out what a U.S. team looks like consistently.
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The talent is there so you can probably survive the first few games pretty easily. The talent is also going to align with Hayes’ usual standards as a coach. The bigger question is how does Hayes reshape this team in her image? Because from everything that I know about Hayes, it does take a little bit of time for her to eventually get her vision onto the field.
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The other challenge is that, at a club, you’re with those players every day. That’s not going to happen with the national team.
So how do you get Hayes’ vision into this team with 2027 in mind? Task number one is immediately post-Olympics. I don’t know whether Hayes can influence the 18-player roster for the Olympics. I don’t think Hayes can if she’s potentially at Chelsea until the Champions League final (on May 25).
The next task is to come in and do your talent assessment and figure out who’s doing what leading into 2027.
Harpur: The difference between managing at club and national level is huge. That’s part of why Hayes wanted to leave — that 24/7 lifestyle has taken its toll on her, especially having a young son and wanting more family time.
But she’s got to be able to communicate this vision to a team that she doesn’t know in a very short space of time. This is pure speculation, but the fact that she recruited (USWNT internationals) Mia Fishel and Catarina Macario to Chelsea is beneficial…
Linehan: I hear she doesn’t want to be on the field every day but you’re still going to be in a room working all day. This is still a full-time job and they expect a full-time commitment.
Watching Ellis or Andonovski, they were constantly on the road. Andonovski was constantly going to NWSL games or going abroad to scout players, to maintain communication and connection with players, to watch their progress. I don’t see that part of the job changing.
Crafton: I’ve spent a bit of time with Hayes. The last thing I would expect from her is that she would see this as easing up. She would be taking this immensely seriously.
Like anyone going from club to international football, Hayes might find the loss of control difficult. At Chelsea, she has so much credit, deference and power in the bank, even to the extent that when former owner Roman Abramovich — before he sold the club — initially tried to move ownership to some of the trustees at the Chelsea Foundation, Hayes was one of these people.
For a few weeks, Hayes was one of about four or five people who looked like she might end up accidentally owning the club. That was the extent of the respect that she’d built up at Chelsea.
Hayes also has such an input over each player’s routines, physically and nutritionally. You can’t really do that as a national team coach in the same way. You have to defer to the clubs and that can often lead to tensions between club and country. It’s a big change.
Around the style of play, the reality now is that international football is more pragmatic. You can aspire to a style of play but when do you have the time to introduce so many patterns? Matt Crocker (USSF sporting director) seems to want this U.S. identity — a style of play that you can pass on from one coach to another. I’m not sure Hayes is that person.
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Linehan: There has been a cultural shift in the USWNT over the past five years. When Ellis was head coach, you knew the starting XI and the three substitutes every single game, without fail. Part of Andonovski’s downfall was shifting away from that culture, which had to happen. You can’t run a national team like that any more.
But that is still some of the mindset that the USWNT is shedding while also saying we’d like a recognisable style of play.
Penney: Who are Chelsea looking at to replace Hayes?
Harpur: From my understanding, they haven’t started the process — nobody’s been approached. Chelsea haven’t had to do that for 11 years, and the talent pool is shallow because they want to recruit the best.
But who is an available club manager? Names have been mentioned but, at this stage, it’s only speculation: San Diego Wave manager Casey Stoney; Laura Harvey of OL Reign; Mark Parsons, who managed the Netherlands and was recently at Washington Spirit. He was the former academy director at Chelsea.
But Chelsea have time; they won’t be pressured into making an appointment and that’s quite unusual. The pressure is to get it right.
My understanding is that Hayes will stay until the end of the season. There’s no doubt that she will want to go out on a high, especially with a Champions League title.
Penney: The contracts of Sam Kerr, Fran Kirby, Ann-Katrin Berger and Maren Mjelde are up at the end of the season. How do you convince players like that to stay, with Hayes leaving?
Harpur: Hayes is such an influential part of recruiting players. Just look at Fishel, Macario and Hannah Hampton — they would have been persuaded and impressed by the powerhouse that is Hayes. It poses doubts in those players’ minds; no one likes uncertainty.
At the moment, they don’t know who their manager will be next year.
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(Top photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)