Football needs great characters and, for 12 years, English women’s football was all the more interesting for the presence of one of the most charismatic coaches in the sport in the form of Emma Hayes; never afraid to speak her mind, never dull and scarcely ever beaten. Perhaps the Women’s Super League and the wider English game did not realise quite how much it was missing Hayes until she brought her Olympic champions to London and reminded everyone what a difference a sprinkle of personality can make in helping to grow a sport.
The match itself was rather unexciting, but the USA coach somehow made the occasion anything but. The tone was set at the start of the week when Hayes hosted a press conference in a pub in Camden. Where else? She joked about the venue smelling of “fart and feet”, before pouring some pints from behind the bar. It would be unfair to label the 12 current WSL managers as dull by comparison but it is undeniably true that none of them can yet grab a room’s attention quite like Hayes can, guarantee as many column inches or stir up quite so much attention for a friendly fixture.
On the touchline night, Hayes was as animated as ever. At times in the first half it felt as though she was issuing almost nonstop instructions to her players, gesturing for specific positional tweaks or highlighting runs that could be made. Discussing that with reporters after the match, the USA centre-back Naomi Girma said: “She does a good job of getting us information on the field when we need it and not making it stressful, just instructive. She’s just brought belief into the team. She’s allows us to play with freedom and just go out and have fun. She brings that energy. To play underneath her, you just feel that freedom in whatever you’re doing and feel that you can go out and express yourself.”
Hayes had said in the buildup to the match, well aware that there would be an element of curiosity around whether or not she would sing either of the national anthems, that she would probably “hum” along to them instead.
When the moment came, the 48-year-old could not resist a little smile, as a television camera panned towards her during the anthems. But when quizzed on that topic in her post-match press conference, there came another example of Hayes’s knowhow in handling the more awkward questions with ease, saying: “I was smiling because I could see Naomi and Lynn [Williams] looking at me because I was definitely mouthing the national anthem.
“I’m proud to be English and I’m proud of our national anthem. And I’m also really proud to coach America and I’m really proud of that national anthem. Two things are possible all at once, and I’m not going to run away from it. I know we want to, sort of, I don’t know, fuel a ‘nationalist debate’ around it. The realities are both countries are really dear to me for lots of reasons and I’m very proud to represent both of them.”
In Friday’s pre-match press conference, Hayes was also unafraid to speak up in support of Barbra Banda, after a week when the Orlando Pride striker had been the subject of a barrage of online abuse. Equally, after the game, she was experienced enough to calmly discuss the booing by large sections of the Wembley crowd aimed at one of her own players, Korbin Albert, in relation to the controversies surrounding the midfielder’s social media use and Albert’s alleged anti-LGBTQ+ views. Rather than brushing such issues aside, Hayes knows such topics should be discussed and often uses her platform for social good.
It would be near-impossible to measure how much impact her exit from the WSL is having on the exposure the division is receiving, but it feels as though this season has lacked the off-pitch narratives, the rivalries and the drama that the seven-time WSL title winner seemed to attract wherever she went, for better or worse.
She appears increasingly at home in her role with the new Olympics champions, and her tenure with the USA could go beyond her existing contract, which runs to 2027. If so, it is quite possible that Hayes might go down as the women’s equivalent of Brian Clough in that she might one day be “the greatest Lionesses manager that the Lionesses never had”.
