U.S. women’s national team head coach Emma Hayes has finally had some time to think about the bigger picture.

With the gold-medal win at the Olympics and her whirlwind 2024 behind her, Hayes was able to firm up and present her strategic vision for U.S. Soccer during the team’s January camp. She calls it “The WNT Way,” a plan that builds on technical director Matt Crocker’s vision for the program to grow the sport as a whole in the United States.

The short version? Reframe everything through the lens of girls and women in the sport, rather than relying on what has previously been built for men.

Hayes gave an overview in a presentation during a virtual round table on Monday. Viewed in its totality, it’s a complete reshaping of how U.S. Soccer has viewed the sport. Previously, the federation operated the women’s game as either an extension or copy of the men’s one, despite the standard of excellence set by the USWNT with its four World Cup final wins and five Olympic titles (the men have got to one World Cup quarterfinal, in 2002, and their only Olympic medals came in 1904).

“Fundamentally, everything within our game has been centered through a male bias and a male lens,” Hayes said. “So I’ve challenged everybody across the federation internally to look at how they’ve been viewing the women’s game.”

This exercise was for everyone, from the technical staff to marketing to human resources. Throughout the conversation, Hayes pointed to things like women playing in white shorts, the impact of a poorly-taken photograph on self-esteem and even more insidious issues such as body image and weight disorders.

Hayes has big goals associated with the WNT way: becoming a global leader in this approach, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration from the technical staff to the marketing department to scientific studies and beyond, pushing boundaries through innovation, and creating inclusive environments where people and players are developed and valued.

She has geared the work toward the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil and the Los Angeles-hosted 2028 Olympics, but there are also immediate priorities.

First and foremost, though, she has to get people on board with her vision.

Hayes wants to set up an advisory board with representatives from the NWSL, the top club league in the U.S., and the smaller USL Super League, and possibly the NCAA (college) and youth soccer systems.

“We want to put together a group that is talking at a high level, and advising around the most important things that will be required within our game,” she said. There are already research projects underway concerning performance, technical and medical analysis.

In addition to domestic leagues and youth systems, Hayes wants to align the senior and youth women’s national team programs. This work has already started, with the return of the January camp for the national team and a Futures Camp running simultaneously in the same location. That integration goes beyond those get-togethers to the entire methodology of how the federation approaches women’s soccer. Standards will have to be created to raise the bar and keep people accountable for this vision.

The planning also includes looking beyond the immediate international competitions to 2031. U.S. Soccer and Mexico withdrew their joint bid to host the 2027 World Cup, and have planned to bid for the next edition four years later. “I can’t control that,” Hayes said, “but we want to work to influence that.”

Such a bid may be heavily complicated by the political relationship between the United States and Mexico under President Donald Trump, with ongoing political discussions over trade and the shared border. However, neither federation has made any official statements concerning potential impacts on the 2027 World Cup or any 2031 bid.

But it wasn’t all about the players. Coaching education was a clear sticking point for Hayes.

Priorities are still being worked out, but the double FIFA Best Coach of the Year (in 2021 with English club Chelsea and last year combining her work in London and with the USWNT) said she wants a coaching education director dedicated to the women’s game. That way, course content from the B license through the pro license can be cohesively linked, “whether it’s physiologically, anatomically, technically, tactically, psychologically, socially, emotionally”.

The education of coaches is especially key for Hayes because it’s a direct reflection of having different, specific standards for the women’s game.

“We always do this constant comparing to the men’s game,” she said. “I really don’t care what they’re doing, what works for us? It’s about creating that more than anything else, and becoming more armed with the knowledge and having the right research.”

All of these things combined allow Hayes and U.S. Soccer to think about how to influence the global ecosystem of the sport, beyond the USWNT and NWSL.

“We have to impact FIFA (the game’s global governing body). We have to impact UEFA (the European federation). We have to impact the government level across the world, which isn’t going to be easy,” she said.

Hayes still has her responsibilities to the senior national team.

The SheBelieves Cup starts in a couple of weeks, with the team’s first games of the year against Colombia, Australia and Japan. Hayes said she wants to focus on developing the team over the next two and a half years to prepare for that World Cup in Brazil, but she’s spent the past six months working in the background to get these new systems built and ready to go.

While Hayes doesn’t think this massive project will happen quickly, she is confident it will get done. She said she was “poking the bear” to make it happen. “I’ve had to put the framework in place, and now it’s the work of a lot of people within the federation to hold each and every one accountable to those steps,” she said.

And at the end of the day, Hayes thinks all of this work will help the United States to keep winning in women’s soccer, though it was not a word that came up until near the end of her presentation, during the question and answer portion.

“If we keep more girls in the game at the highest possible level, and we create the best possible environments for us, then the U.S. will win anyway,” she said.

“If we create the best environments for (players) in everything that we’re doing, how we support them, how we coach them, then we’re winning.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

US Women's national team, Soccer, NWSL, Women's World Cup

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