Emma Hayes

Leading the USWNT into a bold new era with her radical approach Emma is prepared to change soccer—and sports—forever.

- By Currie Engel

EMMA HAYES WAS AT HOME IN THE FALL of 2023 when the text came from her agent, telling her that her dream job—head coach of soccer's U.S. Women's National Team—was hers if she wanted it.

She'd been dreaming about this moment since 1999, when her career as a soccer coach was just starting at Liverpool Hope University in England. That year, her father, Sid Hayes, returned from the FIFA Women's World Cup Final, where the U.S. delivered a breathtaking win after a penalty shootout against China. Emma was awed by his reports on the respect for—and treatment of—the women's team. They were Emma's first “football role models.”

Yet for 26 years, Emma has worked diligently and methodically to become the kind of coach who can not only helm the world’s most successful women’s soccer team but breathe new life into it. And to do it her way—unlike anyone else.

The results of the Emma Effect are already evident. Just shy of nine months after being named USWNT head coach, in November of 2023, she led the team to gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics in a decisive 1-0 victory over Brazil (this coming quickly after a brutal 2023 season that saw the departure of head coach Vlatko Andonovski following a tough first-time elimination from the World Cup in the round of 16). And so far, the 2025 season is already off to a blazing start.

Turn Lemons into Lemonade

Thanks to a father who played an instrumental role in starting the youth teams at Arsenal, the storied English club, Emma can’t remember a time she wasn't playing soccer (“I couldn’t escape it!” she says). Their block of flats surrounded a soccer pitch, where neighborhood kids would play. The boys always outnumbered the girls, she says, but “I loved it from day one.”