Chelsea’s Emma Hayes and the life behind a winning machine

Emma Hayes managed to find a way to reflect on her achievements while seeing the bigger picture. At Wembley last year, as Hayes sat with another winner’s medal around her neck – this time after Chelsea defeated Manchester United to win their third FA Cup in a row – there was a moment where she paused from the relentless of football management and its daily demands to focus on a wider journey. “When I sit at home alone and think about the work we do every day, and the sacrifices we all make, I know I’ve given my life to it,” she reflected.

There can be no arguing with that, not after 12 hugely successful seasons at Chelsea, the years working her way up the coaching ladder in the United States in her mid-twenties, the countless hours before then, trying to find the bottom rung in England, volunteering in community projects in her native Camden, doing anything she could to earn the coaching badges and certificates. At that stage, there was no identifiable end point, no professional game to aspire to reach. There was only a goal, or even a calling, to make an impact in women’s football, perhaps winning a trophy or two.

Hayes departs now not just as the most successful manager in the modern era of women’s football in England, but as a pioneer and advocate for a game that has changed beyond recognition while she has been at the forefront of it. When Hayes spoke, people listened, and in the years before Chelsea were selling out Stamford Bridge for a women’s game, or England were winning the Euros at Wembley, she shared a vision of where women’s football could get to, what was holding it back. She encouraged others to dream of progress and opportunity.

Within that, Hayes in many ways created the stages where Chelsea would enjoy a decade of dominance over the domestic game, and her teams shared many of her traits. Even when Chelsea could sign the best players, Hayes ensured they were always disciplined and humble, hard-working and ruthless. Hayes’s greatest strength was her ability to construct a team spirit. Just as she built Chelsea, Hayes fostered a culture that turned her players into an inevitable force. Chelsea developed a knack of winning the biggest games while not playing well. They won and won and won.

The trophy cabinet reads six WSL titles, five Women’s FA Cups, two League Cups, and a runners-up medal in the Champions League, the only prize she and Chelsea did not win in their time together. Another league championship may follow on Saturday. Improbably, the title race will go down to its final day and Hayes’s 367th and final game in charge. Chelsea require a victory against Manchester United at Old Trafford, and enough goals to pip Manchester City on goal difference.

Though her legacy is already secured, a fifth WSL title in a row would be a crowning moment, an achievement that may place Hayes in the same bracket of managerial greats in English football as Sir Alex Ferguson and Pep Guardiola. Not that they can or should be compared, of course. As former Chelsea player and England international Katie Chapman told The Guardian in 2021, Hayes “built everything at Chelsea, from having the kit washed to having food, to having our own building, to having our own training and pitches”. Hers is a story that spanned eras, one that without total commitment would not have resulted in such a journey, even while it has encountered trauma and grief.

There was a life behind the winning machine, after all, and Hayes has given large parts of it to Chelsea while managing its complexities and sudden turns. The second and most successful half of her Chelsea reign can be marked by the birth of her son Harry in 2018 and the loss of his twin Albie, who died inside Hayes when she was 28 weeks pregnant. Hayes returned to work eight weeks after giving birth to Harry, citing the pressures of football management and the fear of an interim manager taking over and impressing to the extent that she found herself out of a job.

Hayes pushed on while the WSL gathered momentum and she became a synonymous part of it. Hayes’s openness lends itself to her charisma and an engaging personality, of which there are very few at the top levels of football. Many of the challenges she has faced have played out in public, while demanding the same standards from her team. Last season, Hayes returned to work within weeks of undergoing an emergency hysterectomy due to endometriosis, and yet Chelsea went on to win the title. They could do the same this season, in the year in which Hayes lost her father and mentor, Sid. “He was my champion,” Hayes said. “He always told me, ‘You are going to change the face of the women’s game.’”

Hayes announced she would be leaving Chelsea not long after the death of her father at 82: the job of managing the United States women’s team, the four-time World Cup champions, represents a journey to the very top. Hayes has cited a desire for a better work-life balance and to spend more time with her son. Even though she is taking one of the most demanding roles in world football, the transition away from club football allows Hayes to breathe a little, too. Throughout this season, Hayes has been visibly tired and drained, tetchy, even, but she has also worked relentlessly through periods of loss.

The end has been tough, at times. There have been games this season where Chelsea have lost their edge, lacking their usual intensity. It was apparent in the WSL defeats to Arsenal at the Emirates and City at Kingsmeadow, clear as the chance to add more silverware slipped away in the League Cup final and FA Cup semi-finals. The Champions League was perhaps the most hurtful of all, in a frustrating and controversial defeat to the world’s best, Barcelona. The quadruple, however improbable, was at one stage only 11 games away, but Chelsea could instead have a first trophyless season in five years.

Has Hayes handled this season perfectly? Not always. The aftermath of the League Cup final defeat saw Hayes shove her Arsenal counterpart Jonas Eidevall and then accuse him of “male aggression”. When Hayes responded to the controversy two weeks later, she did so by reading out a Robert Frost poem in her press conference. But then, for so long, Hayes had always managed to find the right tone when discussing anything and everything, from addressing the lack of female coaches in the WSL to the “systemic misogyny” in football, in the wake of the latest Joey Barton tirade.

Hayes did not ask to become this figure of authority, yet that is what she became, all while navigating complex personal issues, sacrificing time with her family to maintain the growth of a sport and Chelsea’s pursuit of success within it. Now Hayes and Chelsea have one game left. It could end with another title, on the pitch at Old Trafford. At the end, Hayes can reflect that the time has come, after a life given to the game.