United States women’s national team head coach Emma Hayes said there is much work to be done before women managers are given a chance in men’s football.
Hayes is one of the most successful coaches in the women’s game, having won multiple titles with Chelsea and recently winning gold at the Paris Olympics with the USWNT.
But asked by the BBC radio “Today” program on Thursday whether the owners of men’s football teams were ready for a woman head coach, she said: “Of course they’re not, otherwise it would have happened by now.”
Fourth-division Forest Green Rovers became the first professional football team in England to appoint a woman head coach when Hannah Dingley was given the job on a temporary basis last year.
“I’ve said this a million times over — you can find a female pilot, a female doctor, a female lawyer, a female banker, but you can’t find a female coach working in the men’s game, leading men. It just shows you how much work there is to be done,” Hayes said. “And that’s why for me it’s about those that are in charge you have to ask the question to.”
Hayes won seven Women’s Super League titles in a 12-year reign at Chelsea. During that time the men’s team had 11 different managers.
“Often people don’t think that maybe a female can manage a dressing room of male characters,” Hayes told the BBC.
“I manage about 25 men every day. They’re just the staff I work with. I never thought the players would be the problem. I think players want to be coached. And if there is the best available coach just happens to be a female, they’ll get their head around it, just like they did anything else in life.”
In 2021, it was reported she was in contention to take over at third-division men’s team Wimbledon.
At the time, she said it was an “insult” to describe women’s football as a step down from the men’s game.