Emma Hayes quoted poetry and said she would follow advice she gave her son on how to avoid playground confrontations when asked on Friday about her touchline spat with Arsenal’s head coach, Jonas Eidevall.
Hayes appeared to push Eidevall as they shook hands after Arsenal’s defeat of Chelsea in last month’s Continental League Cup final and accused him of “male aggression” – a comment criticised by the Swede on Friday as “very irresponsible”.
Along with quoting a Robert Frost poem at a press conference to preview Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final at Manchester United, Hayes recounted a conversation she had held with her son, Harry.
“My son said to me after the game: ‘Mummy, when you push someone in school you’re asked to go and take time out.’ And I said to him: ‘You know what darling, you can’t meet aggression with aggression, all you can do is tell the teacher, all you can do is go and explain to the teacher why you think something’s unfair.’
“I said: ‘Even if the players go to the teacher, even if the parents go to the teacher, that’s all you can do. You cannot meet aggression with aggression.’ And I thought it was a really good conversation to have with my son after the final.”
Asked whether she stood by everything she had said after the game, Hayes read four lines from Robert Frost’s Choose Something Like a Star poem: “So when at times the mob is swayed, to carry praise and blame too far, we may choose somewhere like a star, to stay our minds on and be staid.”
"I've had time to look at my star." ⭐
— Sky Sports WSL (@SkySportsWSL) April 12, 2024
Emma Hayes recites a poem in her press conference in response to questions about the incident with Jonas Eidevall after the FA Women's League Cup final... pic.twitter.com/9UgdfAwluH
Questioned on what she meant, she replied: “I’ve had a fantastic break. I’ve already explained an important analogy with my son and the lessons learned, and my focus is on moving forward. And I’ve had time to look at my star.”
Eidevall had earlier said: “I thought the comments that I heard after the game were very irresponsible and they were not mirroring the conduct that I had in the technical area. I think always when you make comments about other persons, you have to take into consideration what effects that may have. That’s why you need to be, especially when you’re a leader, you need to be very good with words.
“You need to understand the consequences of both your actions and your language and that’s why I think it’s really, really important that we treat each other with a lot of respect and that we stay at facts as much as possible and don’t get too emotional.”
Hayes, asked about Eidevall’s claim that she had been irresponsible, said: “I don’t have an opinion on it.”
