World Cup-winning coach in ‘cheeky’ nod to her Scottish mother
It was a comic moment between two family members that just so happened to be played out in front of the world’s sports media.
Jill Ellis, head coach of the United States women’s football team, was speaking to journalists following her side’s 2-0 victory over the Netherlands at Sunday’s Women’s World Cup final in Lyon.
With reporters hanging on her every word, Ellis’s smartphone started to ring. “It’s probably my mother Facetiming me, so excuse me one second,” she told the room.
After declining the call, she joked: “It is mum. She’ll probably be pissed – she’s Scottish.”
It was the kind of goodnatured aside that has endeared Ellis not only to supporters of the all-conquering American women’s team, but to fans of the beautiful game around the world.
Team USA have now won the last two Women’s World Cup finals, with Ellis in charge on both occasions.
It is an incredible achievement for the 52-year-old, who was born in Portsmouth to an English father and Scottish mother, at a time when Britishborn girls had little chance to play football at school or college.
“I was a Pompey lass,” she said an interview last week.
“I can’t say I always supported Pompey – I’ve been a Man United fan since I was seven. But I have a lot of fond memories.
“[There were] a lot of great people and I spent a lot of summers up in Edinburgh.”
While she first played football during informal games with her older brothers, it was her father John’s decision to accept a job in the US that allowed her to take up the game seriously.
In 1981, the Ellis family moved to Northern Virginia where John founded a soccer academy. It was at her new high school that Jill began to enjoy the kind of organised football coaching that simply wasn’t on offer to girls in the UK at that time.
In 1994, Ellis gave up a wellpaid writing job with a telecommunications firm to take on an assistant coaching job at the University of Maryland.
It was a gamble, but one she was determined to take. Having gained a scholarship to the College of William and Mary thanks to her soccer skills in the 1980s, Ellis already knew the sport could provide opportunities.
When she told her parents of her plan, her mother Margaret, a former school dinner lady, “was horrified”, Ellis revealed in a 2015 interview.
But her father, who has also enjoyed a successful coaching career, encouraged her to take the plunge.