“I feel like I don’t need to shout the loudest any more,” says Emma Hayes. On Sunday, Hayes celebrates 10 years at Chelsea, and the manager has had to do a lot of shouting to push the development of the women’s game and grow her own team.
When Hayes walked into the club’s Cobham training ground for the first time she was on her own. “We’re talking about 10am on Sunday, no one on site,” she says. “‘What do you mean we don’t have an office? What do you mean there’s no full-time players or staff?’ There wasn’t a single member of staff that worked for the women’s section, let alone had an office, let alone had a desk or a filing cabinet. The starting point was zero, and that was terrifying and exciting all at once.”
