The Big Interview: Becki Tweed
The Big Interview: Becki Tweed
The English-born coach has gone from humble surroundings to one of the biggest franchises in the NWSL. Tweed reflects on her first months as Angel City head coach, her own personal journey and 2024...
“One of the biggest things is if somebody asked you tomorrow ‘Who will win the NWSL?’ Nobody would know,” chuckles Becki Tweed, head coach of Angel City FC.
Tweed isn’t far wrong either, given this season’s defending champions, NJ/NY Gotham FC, finished bottom of the league in 2022, yet ended 2023 lifting America’s primary domestic prize in the women’s game.
“There’s so much uncertainty, so much competition,” continues the English-born coach. “You couldn’t give an answer and back it. Even in your own pre-season bubble, even if you think it’s going well, until you to get to March you don’t really know where you are compared to the rest of the pack.”
That ‘pack’ this year has expanded too. Angel City’s new ‘neighbours’ Bay FC have joined the league and already broken the world record for a transfer fee, while the Utah Royals franchise has also returned, bringing the league to a record 14 teams for the new season, which gets under way next month.
As we speak, it’s the night after Bay FC have paid just short of $800,000 to sign Racheal Kundananji from Madrid CFF, and Tweed has just returned to her hotel room with some food after a day of team bonding with her squad on camp in Florida, which involves some zip-lining and an assault course.
Two years ago, Angel City was the big new franchise arrival to the NWSL, armed with its array of celebrity owners and big name signings, and while now entering their third year the initial hype has died down and has been somewhat deflected to their new rivals 347 miles up the west coast, Tweed is relishing the new challenges this season will offer up.
“We just treated every game like a cup final because everyone had written us off…”
“The new teams are great and to keep expanding our league and bring in world class players, that’s only a positive.
“I think for us, we will always try and drive standards on and off the field. It’s our aim and what Angel City stands for, but yeah…the first two seasons, last year was a big tick in the box making the play-offs and we felt we could win the Championship and that’s an important feeling to have going into season three.”
When Tweed replaced out-going head coach Freya Coombe, who she was previously assistant head coach under, in the summer after a tough first half of the season, she led the team to a successful second half of the season, losing only one game and finishing fifth, a spot ahead of eventual champions Gotham.
“We just treated every game like a cup final because everyone had written us off and there was only a slim chance we could to make the play-offs, but that character and grit and determination, it wasn’t very typically LA when everyone thinks about the glitz and glamour, but we showed we had a bit of everything and now it’s about building on that.
“Would we like to dominate games more? Absolutely, but ultimately our goal no matter what every day we show up is how we win the next game we play and that starts Monday to Friday. You don’t just win a game on a Saturday, you win it with your actions Monday to Friday. What we stand for as a club is the off the field stuff and the community because that’s important and the growth of the sport is something we fight for and will continue to fight for for a long time.”
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It's clear though that on the pitch at least, Tweed is keen to ignore the attention around the franchise and build a formidable squad which can compete at the top end of the NWSL.
While last season the club added big names such as Julie Ertz and Amandine Henry off the back of signing Christen Press and Sydney Leroux in their first off-season, the narrative this winter so far has been around adding some of the most talented young players in America to their roster.
They barely dipped their toes into the college draft, a very different approach to 12 months ago when they paid big money to get the number one pick in order to sign Alyssa Thompson, and in the past few months have added her sister Gisele, Korea Republic’s breakout World Cup star Casey Phair out of the USA’s Player Development Academy, and Orlando Pride’s Rookie of the Year candidate Messiah Bright for $130,000.
There have been more experienced additions, such as long-time Portland Thorns midfielder Rocky Rodriguez, but the general philosophy has been to build on what they have with smart, long-term signings, not solely the big glamour names people expect of Hollywood-based franchise.
“I think when we looked at our roster in the off-season it was important to look at the composition of it,” says Tweed. “We were in that time where we had the experienced players and then really young like Alyssa, the gap was quite stretched, now it’s quite interesting because you sit in a group of 30 people, you look around the circle and I’m not sure you could find a more diverse group in terms of people who are experienced, not experienced, travelled the world, not left LA, it has everything.
“How does a group of people end up together with so many different stories, languages, personalities? It’s wild to me. I look at Casey, Gisele and Alyssa, the draft picks and rookies, they’re their own era and their own group, then you have Syd and Ali [Riley] and Amandine. The best part of this team is it doesn’t matter what age you are, you’re on the team. It doesn’t matter who sits with you, the conversation will be the same and that’s really special.
“I’ve been in teams where you get the groups and the divides and I know everyone says their team is special, but I truly believe this team is special. They’re all here for the same reason, to win football games, whether they’re 16 or 36 and I find feeling and seeing that vibe in the room so interesting right now.”
The 34-year-old, who is the youngest head coach in the NWSL, has had plenty of time to reflect on what a whirlwind 2023 was, for both her and the team.
After three defeats on the spin in June, things looked bleak in a second season where much was expected of the team after a first season settling into the league, especially with fellow new 2022 franchise side San Diego Wave flying, going on to win the NWSL Shield last season.
When Tweed replaced Coombe, they went eight games unbeaten and lost just one of the 11 regular season games she took charge of, before losing to a late goal to OL Reign in the play-offs.
It has though lit a fire for Tweed and the team, and they’ve been chomping at the bit waiting for the new season to start.
“We ended last season in a way that we just wanted this season to start again,” she admits, with a smile. “We came into pre-season with a buzz and excitement, then adding those new pieces…we have to fit those pieces in, but we don’t have to start again and that’s the exciting part, we can build on what was a relatively successful second half of the season.
“It’s been really good, we came back in a better place, we had a really structured off-season programme. We’ve grown out our staff group, there hasn’t been a crazy amount of transition and that’s helped us.”
“I still don’t know what I’d say if you asked me what I’d be doing if I didn’t coach, I wouldn’t have an answer…”
She adds “I think our roster has improved. If you asked me to name a starting eleven tomorrow I think it would look different to how it looked last week and potentially how it would look next week and those things are exciting. If you can name your eleven already, I think it’s a problem. It’s a good problem and exciting to think about what we could look like on March 16th.
“Everybody’s just in a really competitive space now and ultimately that drives the standards. You hit that three-week marker where you feel it, but it’s meant to feel like a grind, you’re meant to have moments where your team has to problem solve and be resilient. It’s not easy, it’s tough, but we know the season is coming around quick.”
On taking the lessons and positives from last season, Tweed continues “The NWSL is so competitive and our second half [of last season] was so successful, but we believed we had the momentum and ability to win a championship, so there’s that hunger and desire to come back and do more.
“We know it’s the most competitive league in the world, that 1% extra is so important. I don’t think there’s a single team sat there saying we don’t want to make the play-offs, I think that’s genuine and it’s the most difficult part of this league. We have to focus on our group and our style, we learned a lot of lessons from the play-off game as both staff and players and you have to tick those boxes along the way, you don’t just go out and win a Championship. We didn’t play our best in that game and when we reflected on it there’s so much we can take that will help us this year.”
Tweed’s own journey to this point is a story in itself. Her distinctive Bristol accent is still evident despite well over a decade in the USA now, and she is just the latest in a long line of English coaches to take their chances in the NWSL.
Her playing career back home saw her play at home in Bristol and also for Millwall in London, all before the new Women’s Super League era in 2011, which coincided with her move across the pond to play for Jersey Blues on the east coast, and she’s never looked back.
“It’s been crazy,” she laughs. “It’s so hard to explain…you’ve seen it from where the league was 15 years ago and how young I was. The guidance and coaching and level of professionalism to where it is now is mind-blowing.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than watching all the leagues grow. There’s a part of me that wishes I could be 10 years old again and be part of that as a player, but if you can’t be a part of it as a player I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to be as a coach. It’s still surreal to me, but in another way, it doesn’t feel surreal. It feels like it was meant to happen. I don’t feel like I don’t belong, but I’m privileged to lead this club and continue to push it forward.
“It is insane, if you rewound the clock 15 years ago, we didn’t even know if we were Bristol City or Bristol Rovers. You’d get on a bus and drive five hours to play Leeds United and might not even get on the pitch. The change has been crazy. To see Gisele and Casey now have the chance to become pros at 16, that didn’t happen back then.”
She is honest enough to admit she wasn’t good enough to be a “top, top player”, and that in turn led her on the path to coaching, such was her love for the game that she would do anything to be involved in it.
At Bristol, being part of the academy allowed her to juggle football and education, and she admits being “surrounded by football” helped shape what she wanted to do with her future, at a stage of the women’s game where earning a living through playing wasn’t possible.
“I still don’t know what I’d say if you asked me what I’d be doing if I didn’t coach, I wouldn’t have an answer. I was in at Bristol from 9am to 9pm, I was only ever around football.”
Therefore, is it reasonable to assume that in a period where the game in England was nowhere close to being as developed as it is now, that’s why she did what so many other coaches were doing at the time, headed off across the Atlantic Ocean and landed on the east coast of the USA.
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“It’s a good question. For me, a lot of it was to do with youth soccer because here that’s a job, but in England…I stay in contact with people because I want to help and be a mentor, but a lot of coaches in England still volunteer at youth level.
“Listen, I definitely volunteered here, but you can come here and work in an under 8s team and be paid. The USA affords people the chance to come over and start a career, and in England at that time it was more closed because those jobs just didn’t exist. It didn’t matter what level you were coaching here, it could be anything, but there were training companies that allowed this to be a full-time job.
“I think if you speak to most English coaches who came out here around that time, they were afforded that opportunity to have a full-time job.”
After hanging up her boots in 2015 while still in her twenties, Tweed joined Monmouth University’s women’s team as an assistant coach in 2017 before in 2020 fellow Brit Coombe brought her to Sky Blue FC as her assistant.
When Coombe departed a year later to take charge of Angel City, Tweed remained under new head coach Scott Parkinson as the franchise became now champions Gotham and also coached the club’s reserve side alongside current Angel City and another Brit in Eleri Earnshaw, and Tweed remained at the club until this time last year when Coombe brought her to the west coast to join her in Los Angeles.
“How do you know you belong? You can question yourself some days, that’s the nature of this job…”
In among all that, she also had a spell as an assistant for the USA under 20s under Tracey Kevins, going to the 2022 U20 World Cup, and through all her different experiences it begs the question of how it has shaped the long-term assistant as she steps into the number one shoes to take charge of her first pre-season as a head coach in her own right.
“I think about this a lot,” she admits. “A lot of people always ask ‘who is your coaching idol?’ and it’s so hard to answer. For me, it’s about whatever identity you want to build for yourself and that’s the journey I’m on.
“Where do I pull experiences from to make me who I am as a coach? The experiences I loved and hated. I loved the daily grind, the ups and downs of the emotions, understanding why you’re being picked or not. Ultimately, every single player wants to be coached and wants transparency. I craved being coached and attention to detail, even if it was a bad moment, I needed to know where I stood and that’s what I’ve taken into coaching.”
She continues “Something else which is really underrated is being an assistant. At this club and the USA U20s, taking things I loved and hated, things I’d do differently, that was really valuable for me in shaping who I want to be as a head coach. I don’t know how you shape who you want to be without being an assistant first unless you have top-level playing experience.”
It's clear her time particularly working with Kevins in the US Soccer programme, one of the most elite programmes over several decades in the women’s game, had a major influence on her, and the coach she took the most from in shaping who she wanted to be as a head coach whenever the opportunity would present itself.
“Whenever you’re afforded the chance to go to a major tournament, it’s a privilege. I went to a World Cup and CONCACAF Championships and went with such an open mind to take in everything I could.
“Being assistant to Tracey was so eye-opening. Her ability to balance out emotions, people’s feelings, tactics. When I talk about well-rounded, she was the person who taught me to be well-rounded. Organised, but not up to 3am. She was the person I looked at as ‘this is what it takes to be elite’. But she was also so normal, you could just pick up the phone, she would put an arm around you. It showed me you can be hard, you can be honest, but you can put an arm around your players and that was something you can’t not take experience from.
“That was really big for me, but also gives you self-assurance you can do this. I was at a World Cup, a major tournament, I thought ‘My input and my impact is important’. Going through that and gaining confidence from belonging in an environment like that helped me become more confident as a coach and as a person.
“How do you know you belong? You can question yourself some days, that’s the nature of this job. Whenever you lose a game you always wonder what you did wrong, what you could have done better. I will always remain in that mindset of ‘this is a responsibility and I want to give my best to everybody’.”
It’s fair to say while she was waiting for the chance to become a number one at senior level eventually, it came about in a fashion she didn’t expect.
After just two wins in the team’s opening 11 games of last season, Coombe was fired days after a 2-1 defeat to Washington Spirit, their third loss on the bounce, and Tweed was put in charge with just three days to pick the team up for a tough trip to table-topping San Diego Wave, a game which marked the start of the second half of the season.
Angel City won, and it started off a second half of the campaign which saw Tweed guide the team to six wins in 11 games and a first-time appearance in the end of season play-offs.
“It all happened so quickly and when you are mid-season and invested in a process, it’s a no-brainer,” she admits. “I wasn’t stepping into a new team and new environment, it was something which already existed. I also think, and it’s something I’ve thought about a lot, but for me you’re just a coach. It’s not about assistant or head, it’s not about a tag, it doesn’t scare me to think I could be an assistant again one day.
“You’re just a coach. The title changes, but your job is to coach. I have ambitions and goals; do I want to win the league and be the best club in the world? Absolutely, but the reality of my next 20-30 years is I can’t be afraid to just be a coach and I have to remain really level headed about that.
“I stepped in at a time we needed each other, the players needed me, and it made it really smooth. We played San Diego in the first week, which was tough, but we took it day by day, one step at a time. We knew we had to pick up points every week and my focus was so on that, the players saw it and bought into it and we just said ‘how do we continue to win games?’.”
Looking ahead, she adds “Now we’ve had a proper pre-season, we can take that pressure of not being in survival mode and turn it into an identity. It’s my first ever pre-season as a head coach and I’m learning every day. How it differs to last year, what we change. There’s never a moment you stand up and say ‘I’m ready to be a head coach’, you just get put into a situation and your natural instinct takes over. I’m the head coach, but we have a staff and I wouldn’t be the head coach I am without the people around me.”
On the topic of coaches, while the off-season has provided an intriguing market for player signings across the league, it is also now arguably the most intriguing group of coaches the NWSL has had in some time.
While the likes of Casey Stoney, Laura Harvey and Juan Carlos Amoros remain, they are joined by an array of big appointments in one way or another.
Former USA head coach Vlatko Andonovski has returned with Kansas City Current, Bay FC appointed Albertin Montoya and Utah Royals a former legend in Amy Rodriguez, while Chicago Red Stars plumped for Jamaica head coach Lorne Donaldson, who guided the Reggae Girlz out of their group at the World Cup last summer, and Houston Dash have gone Spanish in former Celtic head coach Fran Alonso.
Another Spaniard, Champions League-winning Barcelona coach Jonatan Giraldez, will arrive in the summer to take over Washington Spirit in undoubtedly one of the biggest coups the league has pulled off, among many, and the standard and quality of coaches in the opposition dugout is something Tweed is relishing.
“I think again…as important as it is to have quality of players, quality of coaches is really important as well. We strive and in my opinion, I think we are the best league in the world and we should be attracting these coaches and players.
“You have to embrace and enjoy the challenge. I’m really excited to see what they do with these teams. Jonatan coming is exciting, why wouldn’t we want someone like that here to see what he can do? Those things excite me, they add a challenge, but they add quality and as a coach you want to be involved in world class quality. If it wasn’t that level, would you want to be here as a coach? My goal is to grow and work among world class coaches and the NWSL is affording me the opportunity to do that.”
So, what of her team’s chances this year? Since we spoke, Angel City has lost Japanese star Jun Endo to an ACL injury which will keep her out of the whole campaign, but there’s still an array of both top experienced and young players as Tweed alluded to earlier.
The aim, first and foremost, is to put themselves in a position to win a championship.
“Ultimately, the first goal for any team is to make the play-offs,” she says. “You just have to get over the line because anyone who gets over that line has a chance to win the championship. The mentality [last season] wasn’t ‘we’ve made the play-offs’, it was to win the championship.
“Now eight teams make the play-offs, it opens up again. Gotham finished sixth and won the championship, we finished fifth and didn’t. If you get over that line, anyone has a chance whether you finish first or eighth. If I said it wasn’t our goal I’d be crazy, but the first goal is get over the line. Within that we’ll have mini goals and targets, but the main goal is to be in that NWSL Championship game.”