Emma Hayes: Leading the way for female coaches

Emma Hayes is Manager at Chelsea Women. In 2023 she led Chelsea to their sixth FA Women's Super League win, and once again Emma’s team won the FA Cup taking her winning tally to five .

It’s a fascinating conversation where Emma talks very openly about her life, her career and shares lots of advice for others hoping to be high level coaches in the future. 

Just to flag, there’s a little bit of occasional background noise of this podcast as the house next door to Emma’s had some building work going on while we spoke. It’s not too disturbing but just to let you know.

Massive thanks to Barclays for once again supporting this series of The Game Changers which focuses on fearless women in football, reinforcing Barclay’s huge commitment to the beautiful game.  

Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.

Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers

Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media

A Fearless Women production

Transcript

[0:03]

EH:       I grew up in Camden town and I went back there a couple of weeks ago and I think I was just overwhelmed thinking about the impact Camden had on my life growing up and influences, musical influences, punk influences, just our culture diversity, the whole thing. Camden has played a huge part in who I am and I think I actually said this to Jo Tongue, that I’m certain because I haven’t played the game at the highest level that it’s what I learned in Camden that has allowed me to manage. 

 It’s allowed me to manage people ‘cos it didn’t matter what you did, I grew up in flats, literally off the High Street and my memories are really clear.  I played football the whole time and run-outs and probably avoided a few big kids who wanted to give me and my sisters a kicking every now and then and I think all of those experiences have shaped me into the coach that I am.

SA:       You played as a girl?

EH:       Yeah, I grew up, I went to Parliament Hill School and from a really young age I used to take the train on a Friday evening with my sister over to the JVC Centre at Arsenal and we grew up playing for the youth teams there, all the way through til probably 16 and then progressed into the reserves and I remember not having – I think I had a fallout with Vic at the time who was my coach – I probably never had this conversation with him since then but anyway, we had a disagreement about a few things. it didn’t matter, I ended up going to play at Millwall for a bit, Barnet for a bit and everything I was doing I was in pain the whole time and I remember Vic getting me an MRI and I had no cartilage around my joints, my right ankle, and I’m left footed.  So every time I smacked my right foot to the ground I couldn’t absorb shock. 

            So no matter what, I’ve thought about this a lot, it doesn’t matter what my life in football would have looked like, it was so traumatic for me that I just couldn’t play the game I loved.  And I didn’t know how to handle that as a teenager.  But one thing I did do was got my head down, I had some good youth workers, good PE teachers who made me get my nut down, and got enough to get into university and I think that then set me on a different path. So, otherwise I think I’d still be in Camden.

SA:       Were you a natural leader at school do you think – showing coaching and leadership qualities at an early age?

EH:       My PE teacher is still my mentor and I’ve asked her this question many a time which was, and she’s really always upfront about me, she was like, Emma you were never going to make it as a football player but you were always going to be a leader.  And it’s fine, I’m 43, know what I mean, my feelings don’t get hurt at this stage of my life.  And she’s right, I was always the one doing the community sports leadership awards, taking the kids’ sessions in the summer.  I worked for Camden Sports Development.  I worked for Camden Playcentres and would work in the playschemes across the boroughs.  Worked for the Sports Development across the boroughs. 

            I worked in a lot of bars and restaurants and then I worked in a lot of my father’s businesses.  My sister said it to me yesterday, Emma, we’ve had to work since we were 13, daddy never let us sit on the sofa.  And I’m thinking the combination of all of them things, I’ve ended up where I should be, though I probably didn’t see that at the time.

[03:54]

SA:       When you stopped playing, was that disappointing for you, had you had aspirations to play for England or to progress through?

EH:       It wasn’t there.  That didn’t exist.  We’re talking about early 1990s here, so there’s a handful of teams in and around playing the women’s game and you grew up playing against them – the Millwalls, the Charltons, we didn’t travel so far in youth football.  The senior experiences, Arsenal or whomever, again it was limited to a handful of clubs and all amateur.  So it wasn’t like I had aspirations and dreams to become a professional footballer. I had a dream to become Glen Hoddle but never a female equivalent.  I think that in itself has been a key driver in why I’ve wanted to drive the sport is I’ve wanted little girls to have a different dream that I did have.  

            If I ask my mum this question, she’s like, Oh Emma all you’ve wanted to do was play football. You just wanted to play football and that’s what I thought about.  I didn’t think about it in terms of a profession or things like that, I just wanted to do the sport I loved doing and only I think once I realised I couldn’t do it and I didn’t have a surgery that could help at that time.  If I’d have injured myself now, there’s enough surgery to do these sorts of things, but there wasn’t back then.  Was I sad?  Yeah, definitely I remember being really volatile, I think I’d say, in my late teens and my mum always says I was never really that disruptive, but I was always very independent, really determined.  I left home at 17, travelled Europe then went straight to university.  So I’ve always been really outward going, I like to explore different things.

SA:       Do you think someone could be a great coach, a great football coach, or any sport if you hadn’t played the sport yourself?

EH:       I get asked this question a lot and I swear I ponder it a million times.  I always say the same thing.  Do you really have to have a lot of frequent airmiles to be a good pilot? Do you have to be a fantastic student to be a great teacher? Do you have to be a really good patient with multiple surgeries to be a good surgeon? And just think about that.  Do you have to be frugal with money to be a great bank banker? I think that answers the question but I think in our profession, of course experiencing something will offer insight, or provide a valuable reflection for players because you have been in that arena.  You can relate to them but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a great leader.

SA:       I love that analogy, those, I’ll be using that in the future too!

EH:       I don’t know why it sticks in our profession though that this sort of whole process.  I think kinaesthetically it’s important within your coaching teams to have somebody who’s played the game at the same level as the players.  Someone who’s been in the arena is crucial.  Is it a number one pre-requisite to being a manager?  No I think it’s desirable but I don’t think it’s essential.

[0:07:15]

SA:       Excellent. You mentioned that you got your head down and went to university.  You studied politics at university?  So did you ever think that was something you might return to one day?  We could do with some strong female leaders in this country right now, couldn’t we?

EH:       Well I don’t know how I ended up doing European Studies, Spanish and Sociology.  My real love is in language. I loved Spain, Spanish.  I liked government and politics but always of different countries. I always enjoyed - all my dissertations and research was always around things like the Basque terrorist groups, or the world’s largest stateless nation, the Curds. I’ve always had a real  interest in minority groups. I think I’ve always been interested in understanding how big state works in our society.  How we fit into all of that.  I’ve had a big interest in post-1945 European politics.  I’m boring myself listening to it and did I think I’d end up on it? I think I can say this now. I never felt bright enough.  I never felt confident.  I felt that kid coming out of the council estate, like I was never good enough. 

So I think on one level it took me until I got to university to take myself seriously as a student. Up until then it was like, I’m not going to do this.  Got to Uni and thought I really like this and I really enjoy it but I’m afraid of myself.  I don’t know how to do something which is completely out of my comfort zone and thrive in a place academically which I never grew up in.  So I feel like I’ve got unfinished business in that realm.  I think as a result of developing an academic interest in that area, it taught me a lot about strategy and objectivity.  Would I say there are two major components to who I am as a coach and a leader?  One thousand per cent.  Like learning manoeuvres that were carried out by an American Army in the Iraq War. Have I taken that particular sneak manoeuvre into football? Yeah, I have. On so many levels I wanted to work for the United Nations, I wanted to be a peacekeeper, I wanted to be a negotiator or, as I said, I never felt confident enough in my own abilities to really go after it.

SA:       Really interesting.  How did you then find your way into football?  What was your kind of path then into a football career from university?

EH:       Went to Uni, all my pals at Uni were bonkers and needed a bit of order and structure and I was getting annoyed with them every week at training.  And they were like, why won’t you just coach the team? I played and coached them all at once so my dad and Vic helped me out.  We took an Arsenal kit and my team in Liverpool wore an Arsenal kit all the way through my Uni years which was really odd playing in the Busa Cup. I was always the minibus driver.  I was always the one carrying the balls and the cones.  So that should have been a huge bloody indicator then, but it wasn’t, it still wasn’t enough. 

And then I went back to Camden after university and started working with Camden Sports Development for West Houston Partnership and I had the core task of setting up a football league in Regents Park to break up a lot of the fights that were taking place between the Pakistani and the Bangladeshi communities.  And that league is still going strong and I believe there’s about 4000 players in it.  So every Saturday on Regents Park there’s those kids playing, every time I look at that I think I’ve played a massive part in bringing that to life.  And a lot of the work was again working with just dispirit groups across the borough and I enjoyed it but it lacked competition (B/G noise [11:29]

            And the guy I worked with at the time, Geoff, he said to me, why don’t you go out to America and coach out there?  I know some people and boo-boo-boom, just like that, 3 months later I was working for major league soccer camps with £1000 and a backpack,  sense of adventure.  I went, sod it, I’m living back home, I’m going, and I went, and that was that.

[0:11:52]

SA:       And when did you get your UEFA coaching license, was that before you went?

EH:       Yeah, I think I did that when I was in Uni.  I went to Stoneybrook in Long Island and I worked with a soccer club out there and from there I then started with the Long Island Lady Riders.  And that was a real unbelievable experience.  I got to manage a team at 25, thrown in at the deep end, clueless and having to manage my boss who was also my goalkeeper.  Huge learnings and huge mess-ups all at once. Without them I don’t know where I’d be and from there I went to New Rochelle to work for Iona College.

I learned a lot then about the importance of community and working for university or colleges in America, that whole scholastic experience and holistic approach to the development of the student athletes I think I’ve taken with me. America’s played a huge part in who I am, definitely and that experience at Iona College it, hands down, was my favourite.

SA:       And what was it about it?

EH:       The whole thing, I think the combination.  I’ve got football players that are training in the afternoon, going to classes in the morning.  Involved in shaping their whole lives around it and helping them, guiding them.  I enjoyed the age range immensely.  I had a brilliant group of girls, we used to come up against huge opponents and, we were like, it doesn’t matter we’re going to beat them anyway.  And how we ever did, I used to get like a 500 record,  which is like just winning 50% of your games in America.  And it was like winning the World Cup for that school and we just had a ball. And they looked after me, the school looked after me, the players looked after me, it was just a really lovely 3 years.  I was really sad to leave but I got the call from Vic to come back home to assist him. I was torn.  It probably took me 3 months to make that decision.

SA:       And how long were you back at Arsenal for?

EH:       Two years, came home, oversee the academy programme with Kelly and Jane and that was a great group of 16-19-year olds and then I coached the women’s team of an evening and Vic managed the team and I coached them. And I’ve known Vic ‘cos he was my coach, so that was weird at first.  Vic and I have known each other a long time and I was there to do a job for him and there was a title he wanted to win desperately and we managed to win it in the first season I was there, in the UEFA Cup.

You know what, I was offered the chance to take over from Vic and I declined because I wanted a challenge.  I wanted to improve and I felt that if I just stayed in the league where there were guaranteed winners, yeah, it would look pretty on my CV but I don’t care about those things.  I wanted to be pushed and I had a decision to make between Chicago and St Louis and I’m so glad I went because Chicago is another experience that was impossible but crucial.  I needed all of that setback, all of that disappointment, all of that effort that went into trying to put a team together there.

[0:15:17]

SA:       The new franchise?

EH:       Yeah I mean literally had to put a team together from scratch and that was a whole new process from a learning perspective is one that I took forward with me.  I’ve always sort of been able to build teams well but I needed the setback at Chicago to do that.  But beautiful city. What a lovely place.  It was a good experience, really, really good experience.  WCRS? was good.

SA|:      Obviously things didn’t work out for you there, so did it make you question your own capabilities at all, or did you know?

EH:       Yeah, I cried a lot. I remember getting sacked and I was in a Starbucks, got sacked in a Starbucks. I didn’t have my phone ‘cos I’d dropped it in the toilet that morning! And I asked the person who sacked me to lend me their phone ‘cos I just needed to get a lift out of there.  She was like, you can’t ring your assistant to tell her.  I said, no, I promise I won’t.  I walked outside and I rang my assistant and I said to her, listen I’ve been sacked and if they offer you the job, you take it. Don’t you hesitate. She’s like, what do you mean? Take the job, you progress, and she turned it down.

SA:       Oh no. So loyal.

EH:       To a fault. You know what I learned a lot about that and the values that matter for certain people and we’ve remained very close as a result of it and she has no regrets about that. That’s the important thing.  It’s her decision on that front.  I then went to South Africa, I jumped on a flight, went to South Africa, went to watch the World Cup, with some VoVo sailors.  Went to see some friends down in Shark Bay or wherever it was.  Cried for a couple of weeks, partied for a couple of weeks, lost my confidence completely. 

Went back to the UK and I said to my dad, you know what dad, I’m going to set up an on-line business for you out of Covent Garden.  We sat in Covent Garden and built an on-line business in Foreign Exchange. It’s our family business but I built the on-line portion and content management systems in the background because I had some really quirky goal keepers that had worked for me over the years and taught me a lot about JavaScript and CMS writing and …

SA:       That is so weird isn’t it? How did you end up at Chelsea?

EH:       Not from looking, I wasn’t looking for a job. A former player of mine, Laura Combes texted me, she was at Chelsea and she said, we need a manager, I’ve told them to ring you up.  I was sitting watching Mo Farrah winning one of his races at home and the phone call came through from the then Chairman.  And I remember thinking as he rang, as much as I want to ignore it, that clairvoyant did say this is where my future’s going to be. 

So I said, I’ll meet you at Cobham tomorrow.  Drove to Cobham, walked on site and I thought, oh my God there’s so much potential here, this is ridiculous, I’d be foolish not to take this job.  I didn’t even ask about the job, the money, the salary.  In fact I worked for very little for a long time. But my own choosing ‘cos I kept with Covent Garden and talk about amazing marriage, I found a beautiful home in Chelsea and wow, lucky me!

[0:18:55]

SA:       Why do you think it is that they’ve embraced the woman’s game in a way that so many other top clubs haven’t?

EH:       It’s always important to get to the top people and find someone in that position who cares and is interested or is invested.  I can speak at the time that both Emma Wilkinson and Bruce Buck in particular, were really keen but they wanted to do it properly, not quickly, just properly and built with a plan and a process and the foundation sort of supplied the support that was needed and I was always really cautious about building progressively. 

So everything that the players earned, I wanted them to feel like they’ve really earned it and that’s my upbringing.  The minute I sense spoilt behaviour, rug’s going, no.  Not for me and I think it’s a value, I know I can see the eye-rolls from my players right now, they know how I feel about this sort of stuff - like we look after what we have, value what we have and you will get more as a result of reward behaviour.  Whatever that reward is.

SA:       Absolutely.  It does feel like the owner genuinely cares about the success of the women’s team. Do you think that’s important and that support affects the players as well?

EH:       The women’s game has a debt of gratitude in my opinion to Roman Abramovich. Because he, from the off, has always been really interested in it and even when we saw each other in Israel, loves the team, loves the team.  Really enjoyed, I remember sitting down during the game I thought, oh God,  we’ve got to win today.  The owner’s here today. He’s so excited he’s got his friends here, I want to put on a good show for him but it’s pre-season, you never know what you’re going to get in pre-season.  And I saw him afterwards and he’s just like, he loves watching the team and he loves all the Chelsea teams, he’s such a big Chelsea fan as well as an owner and that is hugely influential.

SA:       Seen a massive growth in profile in the last decade, so in terms of funding, what difference do you think the Barclays deal has made to women’s football in the country?

EH:       I think it’s made a huge deal because once you get a huge brand name like Barclays associate itself with the biggest women’s league - I was going to say it’s in the world, I know the rest of the world will hate me for that, but who cares? - means that you’ve got a marriage that is about the best and I think being able to provide opportunities, not just at the top end but the grassroots level and all of it - the coaching, the media, the podcasts, the whole thing.

The community that surrounds it to keep it alive, to keep it growing, to keep it progressing.  The game needs that sort of investment and it won’t grow without that investment because like it or not we’ve got 75 years to make up.  So if we all think that people are going to start streaming in the door, just ‘cos we’re on a couple of tv stations, then we’ve got a lot of work to do, give us that investment for the next 75 years at the same level that’s been in the men’s game and then we’ll see where we end up.

SA:       In terms of crowds and people streaming in, how different do you think the crowds are for the Chelsea women’s games versus the men’s at the moment?

EH:       I always say  to most people, if you drive our audience towards just daddy and daughter, you won’t have a regular crowd.  There’s a whole group of people, male, female, single or not that are coming to the games but are consistently coming to the games because they love football. Not women’s or men’s, they love football.  Two, they love the team, can tell that. 

[0:22:57]

Like anything you get drawn into something you really like about something and I think our fans have seen it’s a team that’s just grown and grown and grown and the fanbase has grown with us and I think a big part of that is because we’re still in our infancy. That’s what we’ve grown together and we give as much to the fans as they give to us and they know that because I value the importance that they play in our winning but also in return it’s important we keep giving back to the communities that are marching up and down the country for us – week in, week out. And I think it’s the joined-up approach that has worked at Chelsea.  Everything from the top all the way down has become more co ordinated with more time and as a result of that, you get better marketing efforts, better commercial  efforts, a better approach to the whole thing and then my job is just to try and win!

SA:       Easy really!  You’ve got some wonderful young players in your squad and actually my daughter Daisy is really good friends with the extraordinary Emily Murphy, they were at school together.  Clearly some fantastic talent there.  But how do you identify future stars? What qualities are you looking for beyond that sort of raw talent?

EH:       Well, without giving too much away, cos I’m never going to give a yard to my competitor, it’s a lot of years.  I probably have a huge network of coaches that I’ve interacted with over a 25-year career. So even my next signing that’s coming in, I can say that the relationship with one of the coaches at a point in her career or former assistants down the line play a part in getting a player. So, one, network helps.  Two, I care about the person so I want to know about the person. I want to know who they are in hard times. I want to know who they are when it matters. I want to know about their upbringing.  I want to know a lot about them so that will form a part of it. 

And three, it’s just, I’ve got a good eye so I don’t know how that’s been trained. Probably watching 1000s of football matches over a long time.  And also a clarity around what I’m trying to do.  It’s got to fit in so you’ve got to get everything clear within your own culture around your objectives, your principles, your measurables.  Your key performance-indicators.  Whatever that is, all of that has to be clear before you can see whether a player can fit into that. And then it takes time, it really does. Recruitment doesn’t happen immediately, and it can take a couple of years, maybe even longer and patience play a part of it but also keeping the finger on the pulse.  Am I the person that picks the call up at 1130 when I’m fast asleep if it’s the agent I need to speak to? Yes. Why? I don’t like being second.

SA:       Are you seeing a difference in the skill and confidence of the young female players coming through today to where you were even in 2012?

EH:       (B/G noise 26:15) Oh yeah, the game in this country has a lot to be proud about I think. The strategies that have been put in place to provide bigger opportunities for players at younger levels is one of those.  I think the exposures of our national teams - when I say that I’m saying not just for England but Wales, for Scotland, for Ireland but also beyond that because I am certain that the top international played in our league will play a huge part in the development of our top English talent.  Of course you’ve got to get the balance right to get enough opportunity for our English talent but you’ve also got to be good enough.  It’s been a ball-roll.  A downwards ball-roll for the sport since 2012 and all of a sudden an industry started around our game and I think that momentum is still going.  

[0:27:00]

That’s why, for me, of course yeah, Covid creates setbacks but I have no doubt at all it will keep growing.  I always like to look at things positively and optimistically. I think  anything else becomes negative.

SA:       Almost self-fulfilling isn’t it?

EH:       Yeah, we have enough of that in our sport.  I’m not saying we don’t have to analyse and critique and expect us to do that in the same way but I think that there is such an important part that big clubs can play in the growth of the game.  I know everybody always looks at it so negatively sometimes instead of saying, listen if I was to ask you to write down the 10 key things that a lot of big club investment has brought to the women’s game, they will outweigh the negatives.  And I think that the quality that’s on the pitch, the product keeps improving, it’ll get harder and harder and more and more teams will become competitive within it but it takes time to do that.

SA:       Culture and values.  You’ve talked about a no-excuse culture?

EH:       Well, if say, for example, you play a game and whatever, something happens in the game and a player can say to you, I know but you didn’t make that clear this week during, in training, or nobody provided me with that. Or I always look at my role as a facilitator.  We’re a service industry. I’m the contractor, I’m the head contractor and I’ve got a ton of sub-contractors working for me. And those sub-contractors are all in place to put everything there so that the players just play. 

I’m not saying they don’t have to think and I don’t want to spoon-feed them through the entire process but I want them to be in a position that they are responsible for their performance.  Not me, they are, and they take responsibility because everything is provided that’s necessary.  And it doesn’t mean about giving them everything.  It’s about reflecting on the things that really, really matter and make sure that you listen to what their needs are and provide them so that come game day you say, I’ve done my job, you cross the white lines, it’s your job now until half-time.

SA:       And how would your staff describe you that worked with you? I’ve heard people talk about you having this really incredibly professional and demanding environment.  How do you think they would describe you?

EH:       Which one? Driven, I think driven comes up a lot.  Adaptable. I never settle, I never sit still either? I’m happy to tell you how to do it, how to win but I know that by the next time you play it will already have evolved into something else.  It’s evolutionary our culture.  I think the more and more I coach, now, the more redundant I’m becoming because I’m getting better at knowing how to draw situations from  the players so that they are, through purposeful questions, they are in charge the whole time.  So I think probably those things.  I’m not stubborn.  I’m not controlling either.  I don’t like micro-management.  I like to trust people but if you do a crap job, I’ll let you know.

SA:       Training at the club and tailoring to menstrual cycles. Why has that been important?

EH:       Well, I think the menstrual cycle piece gets the most highlight when it shouldn’t and here’s why.  Women are not small men and we both know that. So considerations around the differences between a man and a woman are one of the important considerations to make sure everybody can perform at their best level. That’s just one consideration.  

[0:31:10]

There might be 12 or 13 others, from age of the player, to injury history of the player, to how many minutes they’ve played, to how explosive they are to their playing position etc etc. So I think one of the things we do really well  is individualise around the player.  What we’ve done round the menstrual cycle is educate people about things that they haven’t been educated about including myself.  So, of course every man listening to this is thinking, how traumatic can it really be once mum? For some people it’s nothing at all. They can just come and go and it doesn’t bother them.  For others it’s absolute crisis so it’s recognising those that really, really struggle with it, how to give them the best strategies to cope with it.  

Much in the same way they might need the best strategy to cope with their sleep. Or their diet.  So I think that’s why I say the menstrual cycle is a piece of it, what I think Chelsea have done – I’m not saying that others aren’t doing it because they probably are in different ways – is I think we’ve made it an integral part of what we are doing and not something that’s sat alone. And for us it’s the ownership that we put on the players to know where they are within their phases, to know what they need to do in and around their phases so that they can perform.  

It’s all about performance, that they take responsibility for that.  So I know for myself if I’m in phase 4, if I am not doing certain things, then I’m going to suffer, much as I will do my strength training, a lot of it in phase 1, ‘cos I know I’ve got my best gains in that period.  But that might not apply to another player on the team or another member of staff. So I think we’ve been educated well. I think we’ve put it into practice well and it’s another part of something that goes towards top performance.

SA:       Excellent.  How do you juggle motherhood with such an incredibly high-profile role?

EH:       With challenges every single day. And I think to deny it would be ridiculous because I’d sell every woman and every mother or parent short.  I battle between the guilt of spending too much time with him and not with the team and vice versa.  I  went back to work within 8 weeks of giving birth.  I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I was in a coma the whole year but I felt like we’d won the double, I think we’d won the double, yeah, we’d won the double and I thought I could just pick up where I left off and then I realised, oh my God, I’m so tired. And I just think the battling my hormones this last two years has been a huge struggle and I think I’ve just about got it under control. 

I think Covid’s saved me in a lot of ways, saved my health, I really felt maxed out.  I remember standing on the touchline at the Comedy Cup Final, I didn’t sleep very well the night before and I thought, I just want to lay down - during the game I just, I am so tired, and I’ve got to put it all in place, everything I’ve trained my brain to do to stay with it and to keep influencing the team and be at my best. So I had to implement a lot of strategies to do that with sleep deprivation, with hormones that were all over the place and also trying to learn to do something no book can teach you which is being a parent which is the hardest thing anybody will ever do.  

Running a team is so easy! So yeah I struggle like every woman  but I do my best and I try to tell myself that even if I don’t always feel that way and even if I probably cry more about being a crap parent sometimes than I do anything else.  ‘Cos if I feel like I’ve failed, not being able to get food in that day or haven’t connected with him in that day, that really troubles me.

[0:35:27]

SA:       Yes, motherhood.  Gender diversity in 2020 in the Premier League and also the EFL. Where are all the women, would be my question?

EH:       Well I think I’ll start with just diversity. Let’s just start there. I can’t wrap my head around that it’s an industry that thinks -it’s an industry that’s about performance so if you’re talking  about getting the best out of people, differentiation plays a part in that.  So what might get the best out of you, versus me requires different mastery. But also everybody comes from different backgrounds, different experiences. So to think we are a profession that doesn’t have a lot of diversity – whether it’s more women, whether it’s more BAME candidates - shock me still to this day. So that’s the starting point, diversity in the first instance. 

And I wonder what it will take and maybe the Black Lives movement will play a part in that change, ‘cos I don’t think it is going to be about gender diversity in the first instance. But I do think that I can relate.  I can certainly relate to being a woman, walking into all my coaching courses over the years, to walking into most football environments and feeling like I have just walked out of a spaceship or something.  I can relate to that part.  Do I think the football world is ready for change? Oh, that’s a great question and one I don’t think I can answer. I’m always hopeful and I’m always ambitious about progress in our society and I am grateful for the levels of education that are starting to take place about how it feels to be on the outside, and I certainly take that on board around Black Lives Matter and how it feels to go into a room or walk down the street and feel instantly like you’ve been judged. 

Whether it be your skin colour, whether it be, in my case, being a woman and I can relate to a portion of that but I tell you I also reflected hard on this about where do I sit as a woman in football in relation to – and I’ve had a lot of these conversations with Chris Ramsay one of my friends about - where women stand in all of this?  Do you know what? The realities are I actually think, other than the football bubble, I wouldn’t have experienced negative situations in my day to day tasks.  I haven’t felt that as a woman, if I’m honest. It’s only in the football bubble do I feel like, God I could be more experienced than that person. I’ve probably got more coaching experience, probably even have more quals, I’m never going to get that job. 

So I doesn’t matter whether John Herdman goes from Canada women to Canada men, to Mark Sampson from England to Colchester, why isn’t Emma Hayes doing that?  Or Casey Stoney or Hope Powell? We’re not. But I think about that more as an adult than I did about whether I was going to be a football player as a child, because that glass ceiling is probably harder to accept as an adult than it was as a child.

SA:       I completely agree.  And do you think it will change any time soon? I know your name is banded about a bit as the woman that will be there taking that first role within men’s football.

EH:       Yeah, I think I’ve been given about 800 jobs. Including football manager.  I’ve had people text me saying, you’ve just been sacked as the Bury Manager or whatever. Have I? I haven’t left North London!  I think I don’t think about it too much.  And why? Because I know in this business you have to stay so present all of the time and so I think only about the task that I’m doing.  Am I hopeful in the future that I play a part in opening the door for other women in the men’s game?  Yeah, why not? If that ends up being what I look back on with my grandkids and I say, you know what, Nannie did this, she kicked a few doors down in her youth, probably happy with that? It doesn’t mean I have to walk into them though.

[0:40:24]

SA:       A Lionesses role. You’ve said in the past you’ve got unfinished business at Chelsea. Do you still feel that way?

EH:       Yeah.  I think I do.  I want to achieve things.  I think sustaining success is a challenge in itself. Winning things - sustaining it that’s harder, so the competitor in me wants to sustain success.  I don’t like yo-yo years with winning.  I don’t like winning those – I need to master that – it bothers me. So I want to master that part.  I like the day-to-day function. I like working with players every day.  I think it’s where my heart is at and I never say never for what my future is but …

SA:       That was my next question. And is it a choice of managing the England men or England women, would you have a preference of those two?

EH:       Again I don’t think about international football.  I love the club day-to-day work and that’s where my heart is and while I’m hugely honoured to be linked to that, I’ve never thought about it.  People always say to me, oh yeah you have, surely you have.  I’m like, look I remember interviewing for England a few years ago, long time ago actually and I was with my mum in California.  And we were driving up Route 1 from san Diego all the way up to Napa Valley. I was like, I’ve got an interview for England and she went, that’s what you’ve always wanted Emma, to get an interview for England.  

And I thought, oh!  It was just like getting the job.  I know that sounds very odd, but when she said that to me, I was like – I laughed – I was like, oh mum you’re so funny, it’s so funny.  You know what you just said, she was like, I know but you’ve always wanted to get the interview. I’ve got that now.  She was like, well you’ve done it then! You’ve achieved! Listen there is this hugely, I know my players talk about it all the time, planning world cups and how fabulous that is, the Euros and Olympics.  Would I like to achieve that once in my career? Maybe, maybe but not now.

SA:       I’m going to finish finally. What advice would you give to young coaches who are coming in now and aspiring to have the success you’ve had? 

EH:       I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve thought about does a young Emma Hayes come back and get the Chelsea job again if it happened all over again?  No. So the accumulations of experiences I’ve acquired naturally like you think about I’m not 103, I’m 43 and I’ve got a lot of experience behind me, would I have had that if I was doing it again? No.  So the journey changes. Well, what does the journey then look like?  I always think if I am hiring again, my younger self, what will I be looking for?

I like different journeys.  I like to think that there’s been an awful lot of challenge and maybe some misery and some suffering but as a result of that, the learnings that come with it.  Diverse I think really matters in those experiences.  I think you probably have to network better than everyone.  As I say having gone through the process for a new assistant coach, I call it the CV culture. Wow, there’s some unbelievably glossy looking CVs nowadays but actually being able to put that into practice is absolutely crucial. 

[0:44:23]

I think for women what I would say is don’t sell yourself short and make sure you talk about football. So often I see on CVs, women talking about, I’ve got lots of good emotional intelligence and I can do this, yeah but that’s important but don’t sell me on that.  Tell me how you’re going to beat the opponent.  Tell me you’re good enough to know how to do it. Cos I tell you what when I have to go up against Joe Montemurro or formerly Nick Cushing, look, football has largely been a man’s world, I want to know more importantly that it doesn’t matter what they think about me, it’s totally irrelevant,  but they know my team’s going to be prepared. 

And I want to my team to have a strategy to beat them and what’s what I want to know about coaches – is do you have the strategy and have you developed that enough and are your football references strong enough that you can actually get to this level?  And why is it that matters? Because if you look at people like Nick, even Joe, they’re coming from the men’s games, their references are strong.  Their development pathway might be stronger so we’re going to have to raise the bar to make sure we stay with that and that’s something I’ve reflected on even going through a recent process.

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