Emma Hayes: The Stateside Story

Beginning in 2001, soon-to-be USWNT head coach Emma Hayes set out to start her coaching career across the pond, remaining there until joining Chelsea in 2012. Those who knew her best offer an insight.

Emma Hayes would become the Chicago Red Stars head coach later in her US- stint. Image: isiphotos.com

After what will be 12 years in charge come next summer, Emma Hayes is leaving Chelsea after an unprecedented decade of personal and team success, for arguably the number one job in the world, but also one of the most daunting, head coach of the USA.

For Hayes to walk away from all she’s known since replacing Matt Beard in 2012, it was going to have be something special, and the lure of trying to take the USWNT back to the top after a shock second-round exit at the summer’s World Cup appears to have done the trick.

It will be no easy task. When Hayes finishes with Chelsea in May, she will have just two months before trying to lead her new side to Olympic gold in Paris next summer, but it’s no doubt a challenge Hayes will hit head on.

But this is about more than just a new challenge, Hayes has a genuine affinity with football in the USA, as was evident in the press release from US Soccer on Wednesday which confirmed the new worst kept secret in the sport.

“The feelings and connection I have for this team and for this country run deep,” were Hayes’s words.

Because when Hayes was just 24 and her playing career had been all too prematurely ended by a freak injury on a ski trip while part of Arsenal’s academy at just 17 years old, the London-born wannabee coach packed her bags and headed across the pond to the country leading the way in the women’s game, with England at that time still lagging far behind.

The details of her time in the USA are scarce given the lack of coverage of the game at the time and Hayes’ largely unknown name in either country at the time, but those who worked with her tell a story of a truly dedicated coach who was determined to reach the top.

This is the story of the decade-long association Hayes found with a country which wasn’t hers, but from next year will become exactly that, for the second time.

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“Well, you found them!” laughs Julie Susskind, when I say I’d be searching for one of the first coaches to work with Hayes in the USA.

Known as Julie Gick back then, she formed a trio with Hayes and Diane St. John at the Long Island Lady Riders in the state of New York which would be home for Hayes until she returned to England with Arsenal.

Partaking in the USL W-League in 2002, Hayes would lead the team to a successful season and still in her early twenties, and in her first coaching role, she would be named W-League Coach of the Year, and even two decades on leaves a lasting impression.

“I don’t really feel like I’m qualified to have this conversation,” says Susskind. “I was 22, I think she was 24? I don’t even remember how I got involved, why and how did I get involved?! That was her first coaching position in the USA, we kind of came in and I just followed her lead – what a tremendous person, even at that point.

“She was always confident, consistently confident, always had a plan. She just knew what she wanted and demanded that from day one, that’s what I remember. I had just come out of college and what an experience for me to watch her coach. We were babies, relatively. Kim Wyant took over and brought Emma in. It’s hard to remember the details 20 years on, but I was somewhere along the line asked if I wanted to coach with her. I learned just a tremendous amount of tactical and technical information, how to work every facet of a team. I was coaching high school soccer too and I took everything she taught me into that.”