No Bridge too far for Blues’ Hayes
IT WAS back in February when Emma Hayes was asked if she was interested in taking up the newly vacant job at AFC Wimbledon.
Did the Chelsea Women’s boss want to become the first female manager in the men’s game?
Or, to put it another way, did she fancy giving up her job in charge of the best women’s team in the country, coaching the finest players, winning titles and making history for a shot at keeping a club on a run of nine straight home defeats in League One?
The answer, you might not be shocked to find out, was no. To paint such an opportunity as one to leap at, she said, was ‘an insult’ to women’s football. Not to mention she was adamant that AFC Wimbledon could not afford her.
‘I don’t know why anyone would think women’s football is a step down from the men’s game,’ she said. ‘The football world needs to wake up. While the game is played by a different gender, it’s exactly the same sport.’ And why would she? A day after AFC Wimbledon crept to survival despite defeat in their penultimate league game of the season, Hayes’ Chelsea dispatched Bayern Munich 4-1 to overturn a firstleg deficit to become only the second English team to reach the Women’s Champions League final. A week later, they retained the Super League title. This evening, they face Barcelona to become European champions. Victory would represent their third trophy of the season after the League Cup and the title.
They have the fifth round of the FA Cup still to come too. Hayes has a chance to accomplish something that even Pep Guardiola was unable to do this season. Something her father’s hero, Brian Clough, never did. Win the quadruple.
What is it that makes Hayes one of the best coaches in the world? She’s outspoken, or as she prefers to call it, ‘honest’. She’s a master tactician. A video of her barking instructions at Chelsea players Sam Kerr and Pernille Harder during their win over Wolfsburg recently went viral. Hayes can be heard telling Kerr to ‘do the double press’ while telling Harder to get further ‘up the pitch because of the high full backs’. It is a coaching masterclass in real time.
But, perhaps most importantly, it’s her ability to inspire. Like all great coaches, it’s being able to motivate everyone, whether a firstteam regular or a squad player who thinks they should be more. Hayes shows her team motivational videos of other sports stars in the build-up to matches, whether that be Michael Jordan or UFC fighter Rose Namajunas — or even of a flock of geese flying in a V formation to explain how they each have a role, each support the other to allow them to fly further.
‘She’s really motivating,’ says Harder, who became the world’s most expensive women’s player when Chelsea signed her in the summer for £250,000.
‘She has these motivational videos before the games to try and give us inspiration from other people from other sports, which is really cool.
‘What the videos tell us is how champions are made and the mentality of them. It’s good to get inspired by people in other sports.’
And it works. Hayes has won four WSL titles, two FA Cups and two League Cups in eight-and-a-halfyears at the helm.
‘It’s a team where everyone gives something to the team,’ says Harder. ‘In training, outside the pitch, on the pitch, we work together, all of us. That’s also why we’ve been so successful.’