After leading the U.S. women to the Olympic gold medal in just her 10th game in charge, Hayes could have coasted for a few months. She could have maintained the status quo and took time to catch her breath from the whirlwind of the past year.
But that is not Hayes’ way. If you’re not always pushing forward, you’re falling behind. Or, as she likes to say, if something isn’t broken, break it.
‘It’s something that’s served me really well in my career. Something that I think is essential for top performance,” Hayes, who won seven English Super League titles with Chelsea and has twice been FIFA’s coach of the year, told USA TODAY Sports.
“That’s not to say destroy everything within that framework. But it’s absolutely essential that to compete at the highest level, you have to challenge, you have to reflect. Be adding to, subtracting,” Hayes said. “It’s an evolutionary process.
“The moment teams get in the comfort space of previous winning is a future indicator of winning — it’s not enough. It’s not enough. You need to be so mindful of what the very top nations are doing around the world and do everything to try and stay one step ahead.”
The breaking begins this week, with a USWNT training camp that will be held alongside a Futures Camp for players age-eligible for the Under-23 team.
Hayes has a long-term vision for the entire U.S. women’s program that she’s expected to unveil soon. But a key piece of it is bridging the ‘gap’ — more like a chasm — the USWNT has in international experience for its youth players.
For decades, the NCAA system was enough to give the USWNT an advantage over other countries. But as the rest of the world poured money into their women’s program, the lack of attention to youth development became glaring.
Consider defending World Cup champion Spain, whose ‘golden generation’ developed together. Spain’s roster for the 2023 World Cup looked much like its roster for the Under-20 World Cup in 2018. And the U-17 World Cup in 2016.
In the United States, the U-23 team did not play a single game last year, and only five in 2023. The U-20 team finished third at last year’s World Cup after failing to get out of the group stage at the previous two tournaments. The U-17 squad played only two games last year that weren’t part of the Concacaf championship or World Cup.
‘The reality is, there’s a correlation between cap accumulation (at the youth level) … and winning,’ Hayes said. ‘We have to invest significant resources into this future proofing so we can develop more players at a higher level.’
When the USWNT stumbled home from the 2023 World Cup, having made its earliest exit ever from a major international tournament following a sub-par showing at the Tokyo Olympics two years earlier, the rest of the world gloated. Maybe not loudly or even publicly. But there was a feeling the mighty Americans had finally been humbled, the playing field leveled.
Hayes, still at Chelsea, heard all of it. By winning gold in Paris, she and the Americans let the rest of the world know that their demise had been greatly exaggerated. But it’s not just about the titles and on-field dominance for Hayes. If it was, she’d have stayed in England.
She came back to the United States because she wants to change the game, on and off the field.
Hayes wants to encourage more women to get into coaching, and make sure they have the resources to do so. She wants to use AI to ensure her players have the best support mechanisms possible. She wants more research into the physiology of women athletes and then have it be used to design training and treatment plans specifically for women. She wants her players to be empowered in soccer and anything else they do.
“I’ve got a team of people behind me that are determined to shape the future narrative for women’s soccer in this country. And with that, launch the women’s national team strategy, which is to make sure that the female lens is at the heart of everything we do,” Hayes said.
That sweeping vision might be daunting to some, but not Hayes. Every day she gets to coach the USWNT is ‘amazing,’ the smile in her voice obvious as she said it. This is, after all, what she imagined for herself back in 2001, when she attended the championship game for the WUSA, a precursor to the NWSL.
‘One day,’ she recalled thinking, ‘I’m going to be at the very top of this country. I know who I am and what I want, and now I’m going to put my career’s work into doing that.’
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.