Will Emma Hayes ever manage the Lionesses? Chelsea icon was always a better fit for the USWNT, not England

The seven-time Women’s Super League champion guided the U.S. to Olympic gold this year, but could she ever enjoy such success with her homeland?

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  Huge opportunity

  Let’s talk about prestige first of all, because there is no job that has more than the one Hayes took up this year. No team has won the World Cup more often than the USWNT, with the U.S. as a country having been a huge trailblazer in the women’s game for a very long time.

  “First of all, this is a huge honour to be given the opportunity to coach the most incredible team in world football history,” Hayes said upon being announced as the program’s next coach in November 2023. “No one ever knows what the right time is in life for anything, but it's the feeling I have for this team and for a country that I have a great connection with and a history with. I've dreamed about doing this job from my days as a coach in my early twenties. You can't turn the USWNT down.

  “We've won a lot at Chelsea and I'm very proud of that, and I'm proud of the fact that I can leave that club in a better place and one that I hope continues to compete. But for me, the challenge of competing for World Cups, for Olympics, the dream of coaching a team that I've always wanted to get the opportunity to, I simply couldn't turn it down.

  “I understand how important the team is to the people and culture of the United States. This is not just about the soccer community and I fully understand the prestige and place that the team has in U.S. society. I've lived it. I remember being a young coach working my way up through the system in the U.S. and watching all those young girls aspire to play on the USWNT. For me, the honour of building on that legacy is part of my motivation, no question.”

  Her quotes were littered with an understanding of just how big the USWNT job is and, in that sense, Hayes taking it was always a perfect fit because there is arguably no coach in the women’s game with a bigger profile, not just for her achievements with Chelsea but for the way she continues to push the sport forward in England in terms of increased investment and innovative thinking.

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  ‘Great connection’

  But another of the big reasons why Hayes was drawn to this role and why she suits it was also mentioned frequently in that interview – because of her connection with the U.S. as a whole. It’s a connection that goes back years, to even before she had stepped foot on American shores as a young coach looking to forge her way to the top.

  Speaking to Men in Blazers in 2022, Hayes recalled how there were “zero opportunities” and “zero role models” when it came to women’s football in England when she was growing up. However, the 1999 Women’s World Cup completely changed her perspective.

  The event was hosted by the U.S. and its final would boast the official world-record crowd for a women’s game until that was broken a whole 23 years later by Barcelona at Camp Nou. The image of Brandi Chastain celebrating her title-winning penalty is iconic, and the tournament as a whole changed the entire sport. “I didn't know what a female football player looked like until 1999,” Hayes said. “That and that generation, they were the first role models for me.

  “My father went to Atlanta and he went to the games,” she added. “I'll never forget, he called me from his hotel and he said, 'Emma, you will not believe it. There are thousands of people going to a [women’s] football match and they idolise these players'. I was like, 'Really, Dad?' He said, 'You have to be in America. This is where you have to be'. And that was in 1999.”

  Not long after that phone call, Hayes would indeed cross the Atlantic as she made the first steps in what has since become an incredibly illustrious coaching career. It’s a move that would strengthen her affection for the U.S. massively…

• Made in the USA

  Hayes might’ve been born and raised in England, but her coaching path was kickstarted by her move to the U.S., and it’s no wonder that she has such an affinity for the country today. In her early twenties, she landed in New York with only a thousand dollars in her pocket and quickly set about making her mark in football overseas.

  “The culture shock for me was I just couldn't believe how much football was being played everywhere, on fields, at these little youth clubs with hundreds and thousands of kids and, more importantly, a split, an even split between boys and girls,” Hayes told Men in Blazers. “It was so shocking for me. I was coaching boys’ teams as well, which I really loved, and I remember, within 12 months, I got an opportunity to work for the Long Island Lady Riders. They'd sacked their coach and this little 25-year-old was sort of in a position that went, 'I'll do it'.”

  The Lady Riders were in the semi-professional W-League and Hayes would be the youngest coach in the division, but would still go on to be named Coach of the Year in her first season. The following year, in 2003, she became head coach of Iona College's women's team and spent over two years there before deciding to return home to England, and to London, where she was Vic Akers' assistant at Arsenal.

  Hayes helped the Gunners achieve an unprecedented quadruple and was part of what remains the only English women’s club team to become European champions – but she wanted more. When Akers left his role in 2008, she was offered the chance to replace him and turned it down.

  “I realised that trouncing teams 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, 7-0, 8-0, it just didn't stimulate me,” she explained. “It wasn't enough. At that young age, I felt like I needed to be pushed again and taking the hard decision to go back to the U.S. was, for me, the right decision.”

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  Unfinished business

  And so back to the U.S. Hayes went. It was there she felt, as her father had told her in 1999, she had to be if she wanted to coach in a competitive, challenging and exciting environment in the women’s game, and so it’s hardly surprising that, despite so many years away from the U.S. while in charge of Chelsea, she still harboured this immense connection to the country.

  In 2008, Hayes was announced as the new head coach of the Chicago Red Stars, a founding member of Women's Professional Soccer (WPS), a league that would precede today’s NWSL. There, she drafted future USWNT icon Megan Rapinoe straight out of college; she coached more soon-to-be World Cup winners in Carli Lloyd, Jess McDonald and Whitney Engen; she signed three England internationals, in Karen Carney, Katie Chapman and Anita Asante, to give them a taste of life in the U.S; and she coached other stars names too, such as Brazil legends Formiga and Cristiane, Australia goalkeeper Lydia Williams and Kosovare Asllani, the talismanic Swede.

  But despite the star-studded squad, things didn’t work out for Hayes in Chicago. This was no easy job. She was building a franchise from scratch, she was doing so much more than just putting a team together, and she didn’t get the time to really build it all up. “That was a whole new process that, from a learning perspective, is one I took forward with me,” she told the Game Changers podcast. “It was good experience, really, really good experience.”

  Thirteen years on from being sacked by the Red Stars, after incredible success in England, it’s no surprise that Hayes jumped at the chance to go back to the country she loves, but also the country she failed in when given her first big shot in a professional league. She had unfinished business. After winning Olympic gold earlier this year, she's already set about putting things right when it comes to her story in America.

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  Committed to Chelsea

  After leaving Chicago, Hayes carved out one of the best coaching careers in the women’s game. Given time to build something at Chelsea, she more than delivered, establishing the Blues as the dominant force in England with seven league titles – the last five of them in succession.

  To deliver results like that required total immersion in the project as well as huge commitment to it. So, while Hayes’ name was always linked with the England job when it became vacant, it’s never felt like she was even close to taking it.

  In 2017, when Mark Sampson left the post, Hayes said: "I have nothing but love for [Chelsea] football club and I want to go on record to say, 'Thank you for everything that you've done to support me and I will be here for a long time to come'."

  Three years later, when there were questions around Phil Neville’s future, she pondered it a little more but still dismissed the links, given what she hoped to achieve with the Blues. "It's been no secret that I have real big ambitions to win the Champions League and I think we've built a team that is capable of competing for that,” she said, just over a year before she and her team would come their closest to doing so by reaching the 2021 final.

  "Of course, it is an honour to be linked with your national team,” she added. "At the moment, I've probably been more considered about entering international football at some stage in my life, but right now I'm extremely happy at Chelsea."

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  What changed?

  Hayes’ trophy cabinet was still missing a European title with Chelsea, so what made her ready to leave her quest for that elusive trophy to become USWNT boss? Well, she said it herself, you can’t turn this job down.

  Being offered the chance to take charge of the biggest team in the women’s game is perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity. Given Hayes won almost everything with Chelsea, given her love for the U.S. and given her unfinished business across the pond, how could she say no?

  Hayes certainly did plenty to push Chelsea closer and closer to winning a Champions League title, and it does feel like the Blues will get over the line sooner rather than later, even if she will not be the manager who hoists the trophy above her head if that day comes.

  With her thinking more about international management back in 2020, when linked to the England job, perhaps it’s no surprise that Hayes chose to take that step last year when the USWNT opportunity arose, having almost completed club football with Chelsea.

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  Timing not right for England - yet

  Sadly for English football, unlike how things worked for the U.S, the timing has never been quite right whenever Hayes has been linked with the Lionesses. Whenever the vacancy has been there for the England team, the 48-year-old was still in the thick of building up her Chelsea dynasty, rather than being at the point she was when she took the USWNT job, more tempted to try something new.

  In an alternate universe, the U.S. wouldn’t have come calling last year and instead, in 2025, the year that England head coach Sarina Wiegman’s previous contract was set to expire, the FA might’ve had a genuine shot at having Hayes take the next step of her career with her home country. But with Hayes moving to the U.S. and Wiegman signing a new contract, after it seemed possible that the Dutchwoman could move on before the 2027 Women's World Cup, that's all changed.

  Could the timing be right further down the line for Hayes and England? Perhaps. After all, it’s a job she has described as an honour to be linked with before and it would, of course, be special for any coach to take charge of their own country’s national team. Trying to predict what might happen in three years’ time is always difficult, but there is a chance for the stars to align in 2027, when both Hayes and Wiegman will see their current contracts expire after the World Cup.

  It's not as if Hayes' affinity for the U.S. means she lacks any for her home country, either. Ahead of Saturday's meeting with England at Wembley, the former Chelsea boss acknowledged that it will be a "weird moment" when the anthems play. "It’s something I will hum along to as I always have done, being the English person that I am," she said on Monday. "I’ll also do the same for the American national anthem because I love both anthems."

  That said, sometimes it’s just not meant to be. As was the case for Brian Clough, one of Hayes’ idols and arguably the greatest manager the England’s men’s team never had, perhaps these two worlds just won't collide. In 2027, the former Chelsea boss will have only been in the U.S. job for three years. Unless that year's World Cup goes so badly that she departs for other reasons, which seems unlikely given this year's Olympic triumph, it'd be a surprise to see Hayes move on from her dream job so soon.

  Whether she ever becomes the head coach of the Lionesses or not, though, one thing is clear: Hayes and the USWNT are a perfect match for so many reasons. Many of those relate to her skills as a coach and what she has achieved since she left the U.S. back in 2010. Others are because of the inspiration and the motivation Hayes has gleaned from this trailblazing nation for so many years – one that, finally, she is enjoying serious success in.