How Did Emma Hayes Bring Joy Back to USWNT? | The NWSL Show

[Music] for years the the atmosphere around the US Women's National Team and obviously we'll get into all the nwsl stuff here in about 10 15 minutes but uh we'll I want to start with this because I think it's really fascinating um the atmosphere and environment at the US Women's National team has always been something of much discussion in a lot of different ways but something that has always been apparent in talking to players on and off the Record is the pressure cooker that it is and some of the ways that players have felt isolated and players have felt on their own in that environment over the years when it works and it comes together there's the joy of overcoming and and obviously there's so many strong lifelong friendships and bonds that have been created amongst many winning teams over many a years uh fortunately for for them and also for us as fans of of the US Women's National Team and so there was an interview that uh Rose lvll and Emily Sonic gave with uh Sam muis the three best friends that anyone could ever have uh on the women's game uh the other day that actually really really caught my ear and I I sent it to you guys and as mentioned Jason you've been kind of thinking about this for something you're working on anyway but what really caught my eye was or my ear is how Emma Hayes overcame some of this with a plan and how in talking to players in the past and hearing interviews like Sanchez talked about this quite a bit with her World Cup experience that there is this isolation that players can feel because oh if I'm not playing I don't want to have to lean on like I don't want to bother the play players that are playing and then you wind up kind of looking Inward and spiraling and Rose used that word like we wind up looking inward when things get tough and what Emma did was they laid out in team meetings ways that like obstacles that could come up and everything from one of the examples that either Rose or sonic gave was like oh your family wants too much time from you and you know you have to go to get recovery or training and that's a hard conversation to have with your family that balance um and so by putting some of these things out there players didn't feel quite so alone and when we look at ways in which this team came together and how they were to able to overcome the odds of having a coach that had coached four games for this team going into the tournament yet coales so quickly play so well on the field and ultimately even overcome some onfield adversity to Wi gold I'm curious what kind of importance you guys would put on this uh on on how it actually helped the the team function but also what this means for the program long term because it it's just a significantly more healthy environment yeah and to be honest this is Emma haz's primary superpower um she is very good at managing players it's one of the reasons why I was so excited for her to come especially with this new generation of player and knowing how to relate to them knowing how to help them kind of manage their lives in super stardom which is which is a thing that they all have had and I think are now on the global stage having won a gold medal now have legitimately across the world and it's important I mean she does some of the Tactical stuff too but we've seen you know at Chelsea and Club sometimes tactics would would backfire a bit sometimes you get blown out by volberg sometimes you you get to the Champions League final and you don't look like a soccer team anymore uh at least in the first half of of one of those so like sometimes like tactically she is smart she knows what she's doing but I think for me this is what I'm really excited about with Emma Hayes she knows how to help uh players in these situations she's very good at relating to them very good at helping them manage a lot of things that that kind of get in the way or interfere the ability to like play top level soccer she knows they're going to be competitive it's what she's there for she's know she talked about being born in England but made in America because of the competitiveness that she relates to that part's a given Rose even said in that interview like when she talked about the pain cave she was like well I play in the nwsl like I'm I'm I'm familiar with pain caves like those of us three games in a week what's up we call that a week yeah yeah she's like my I got you back to the pain cave no problem I've got a couch there everything's fine um so yeah I but I think that that piece of it the M's piece of it thinking about things that you wouldn't normally think of when you think about coaching is what she's really really good at Jason yeah I think um this wasn't the first time that the national team has tried to anticipate on its players behalfs these little they're not soccer problems right Craig what you talked about the idea of like your family comes to France they want to see you that's not a soccer problem um but it can become a soccer problem if you're not you know getting enough treatment in a tournament that's designed to grind you to dust um I think what Hayes and her staff really did successfully was not just have the idea that oh we need to like you know help our players get through those challenges but like s they were just better at it than black CO's regime was quite frankly you can see the product is on the field um the the reason the the evidence for this is out there in the the looseness that the team was able to bring while still being Uber competitive um they were able to be relaxed in a way that they weren't in 2019 or not 2019 um in Tokyo and in 2022 um that they were in 2019 they were a little more relaxed in that tournament um and that comes through in so many different ways it is um it's interesting um Sam ewis and Becky sabrun had Lyn Williams they had a little um one of their rare times where they got to do their podcast in person and one of the things that struck me from that was Williams said that in the games um the substitutes or finishers as is now the parlaments um they weren't in the locker room for the halftime talk they stayed out and warmed up and stayed loose they stayed out and then the assistant coach Denise ready would come to them before the half kicked off and explain basically give them the summary of what was going on in there um which is another aspect of preparing players for different situations the starters have a a certain situation they need to be prepared for the subs are living a different life especially in this tournament where only 13 players got to start a game everyone else is experiencing a different kind of tournament um and these are the kind of things that Hayes and her entire coaching staff mapped out from the start I think um tactics weren't that like they came in with a plan you know obviously they'd used Twilight Kilgore and they'd been watching I'm sure Emma Hayes probably didn't get a lot of sleep from when she decided to take this job um and was interim but still as much as we've seen it with with Jonah and the spirit coaches say like well I'm 100% focused on this thing but that's not how a coach is built um maybe they do have free time where it's like well okay it's understandable if you're not focused on Chelsea right now what do you think she did with that time right um she's thinking about this big gig coming up and she's mapping these kind of things out because she probably realized that this was the big challenge this was the thing that hurt them more than anything else in the last two tournaments was this mental side it's not that the team is falling off cliff talent-wise it's this other stuff if we can make this easier everything all the good stuff is going to come through yeah this the stress and what it like what stress does to the body is immense and for a tournament like this to not have added stress is a huge deal and I think that some of the conversations uh that I've I've heard and I've had with with players during the vatco era where like they didn't know if they were going to start a game until the night before when it got announced to the team and you're just like wait what like you didn't go through training with like even if even if you were waiting on an injury like if x then y like no we just I found out when they announced the team it's like oh okay cool that doesn't sound optimal and it just sounds like I I I'm talking to Croy later today um so that'll be cool to check that out on the channel uh check that out in the podcast feed Etc but I'm going to ask her about that like what was the communication like for someone like you we didn't even know if you'd be in the team uh on a game in game out basis based off what Jaden Shaw's injury situation was and I guarantee you uh I wouldn't shouldn't guarantee but I my best guess would be that it she was told like if you know stay ready because this if you're in the team this will be your role uh you may or may not get in based off XYZ and it just seemed like they were far more better prepared and the players were in the loop on that and that takes stress away and in a tournament that is by nature stressful if you can remove stress that's really good and I think the other part of the connectivity and that feeling of like Hey we're not alone because that it just affects the players and like has a long-term effect on them and I it's just something that like I don't think vco is a bad dude but it's something that like I can just never forgive him for for the way he handled some of the players where it was so h Hazard and Scattered and sometimes it was even on a quote unquote good thing right like think of the some of the quotes from Savannah Dello after she's thrown into start in a World Cup having never been capped before that was a surprise to Savannah Dello that should not have been a surprise to Savannah Dello and does not set her up to do her best and that feeling of I don't even feel and I do think one thing that I I'll add real quick to sum up my long monologue here is like in a in a camp setting where everyone's competing for jobs it is different than in a tournament and sometimes this stuff was happening in Camp settings where it's like oh I can't go to that person the leader on the team because I'm actually competing with them for a job once you're in that tournament you are now like how do we win this tournament but I know that that didn't carry over in the way that it certainly did in this tournament with Emma at the helm in terms of making sure everyone's together making sure everyone understood and this is a credit to someone like Lindsay heran too as a leader you think about all the times we've heard of her having conversations with younger players to make sure they're in a good spot it really does take one through whatever number you know 23 in a World Cup uh not enough in an Olympics Etc um to to have that team togetherness and to make sure that it also is something that is growing for the long term and I just I I really am impressed with how Emma Hayes took that head on anticipated Jason and and ultimately got this team in a place where everyone was in a great spot and it absolutely had something to do with the result yeah and there's a great example from I mentioned this Williams interview because I watched it last night after I was finishing finished up work and it was actually really normally I mean anyone that watched snacks knows that that show is fun um but this one was really engrossing because it was two players who didn't go talking to one who did and one thing that William said was that yeah the coaching staff came to her and said like look you're not going to be starting most likely barring injuries bar our plan is that you are here to support the the players that are going to start we're going to be starting those players over and over again um wherever possible and she said like of course as a competitor you don't want to hear that you want to hear I'm starting in the gold medal final you want to hear that but having that Clarity allowed her to focus fully on what is the job that I have and so she talked about how one of her big jobs in the tournament was when they were preparing for Zambia she had to mimic Barbara Banda um she had to press like Banda she had to do what she does on set pieces in the Box she had to do all these little things and she said by not having these other confusions these other these other I think the the phrase was potential interferences yes she was just able to do what the team needed her to do and so that made it easy for her it it took this burden off of her shoulders and you know Craig you talked about the Way vlat co approached it that sounds more like an old school club in environment um where and the thought process is let's Stoke competition so that every session even that session the day before the game is as competitive as any other um so there's a rationale behind it it's not just you know a bad it's not a purely bad idea but clearly in this space it did not work um it was the wrong approach no player seemed to thrive under it and now you contrast that with when you come out of this tournament it's like yeah everyone played pretty well um there were some some iffy moments here and there that with more prep time you would imagine get honed down and and worked out but they won the gold medal and it wasn't really an accident um and it comes from this kind of thing being willing to sit a player down and say before they get on the plane you're not going to start we're bringing you along we we think you're very important you're not going to start your role is going to be this this and this this is how we see you and if it changes we will talk to you about it but right now this is what you are coming on this trip to do um I'm thinking of like going on a work trip and being you know finding out on the plane what I'm supposed to be doing when we get on the ground that's bad um but if you tell me in the week beforehand like okay this is what's going to happen this is where you need to be this is what you need to do great um maybe I wanted to do you know what someone else is going to get to do but at least I can get there and focus on what I'm supposed to do and that's you know the proof is in literally the gold medals for sure Andre last word on this before we get to the weekend in the league yeah yeah not to turn this into you know the the vco bashing hour uh let's let you get your licks in i' I've done that plenty uh over the years um but it just the contrast that with what we heard from Ashley Sanchez about her saying like I was just straight up told I'm not going to play a minute but she wasn't really like given any other role like what what why am I here then right so contrast that of keeping a player who may maybe you're not GNA play them maybe you say like a player like how hir felt sorry you're not going to really get in but here's what I need you to do you're still going to be really important to this team by the way IC get her medal um but I'm still like I think it's really important for for that the last thing I wanted to say is that all of this adds up to what you have here listed The Joy this was the thing that was really important for this team to get back and to express because we have so many joyful players on this team so many just really fun personalities really fun players and they needed to find something that would allow them to to play with as much joy as they could and you saw that they finally got this the US Women's team national team to me should always be fun they may it always win everything but they're a fun team that's how they've kind of captured like that became the global icon plus of course a lot of the social causes and everything else but they're just a really fun team to watch they're a lot of really talented players you think they're down and then they do something ridiculous I mean even going back to shout out to rapino with that long assist against Brazil to to wach like this is what this team does and you had shades of that with two extra time wins uh coming from trenity Robin and Sophia Smith and the joyful celebrations after that like this team is fun again and that's what I've been waiting for yeah we could you know we could go way off kilter here with the American Spirit and the American attitude but when funel in its most simplistic form through sport like I think of that wombat goal as the ultimate like never give up never say die that is what it means to be an American athlete to wear the red white and blue and we have plenty of examples of that being the case and I'm glad you mentioned those two moments in this tournament and I will also say uh hearing like supplementing this topic to the exact point you just made Andre and why I put that word in there if you go watch the behind the crest uh from that the US soccer puts out like Emma talked about Joy a lot to the team like this was a top of Mind conscious like hey let's have fun she had that really funny moment where she goes we didn't come this far and like the classic saying is like we didn't come this far to come this far but she goes we didn't come this far to F it up now and the whole room just loses it laughing like Mal almost fell out of her chair and like it's little moments of that to find levity and joy that that make the journey worth going on in the first place and um by the way when the journey ends in a gold medal that's really nice [Music]