Sports
Emma Hayes won't let her USWNT coaching dream turn into a nightmare
For Emma Hayes, the chance to coach the U.S. women’s soccer team is a dream come true.
It’s the biggest job in the sport, one her father, Sid, pushed her to pursue for more than a decade — and one she finally landed two months after his passing.
“I’m doing the job I love,” she said last week. “I get to enjoy these amazing players.”
Yet dreams, as Hayes also knows, can sometimes turn into nightmares. So she’s under no illusion that reviving a national team that has fallen to its lowest point in decades won’t be easy.
“There’s lots of work to do,” she said after Saturday’s 4-0 win over South Korea in her first game with her new team. “There’s lots of holes in our play.”
With precious little time to repair them. Hayes has less than four weeks to settle on an 18-player roster for next month’s Paris Olympics, where the U.S. will face what looks to be the deepest field in women’s soccer history, one that includes seven of the world’s top-10 teams including Canada, the defending Olympic champion, and Spain, the reigning world champion.
After winning its fourth World Cup in 2019, the U.S. stumbled to a bronze medal in the Tokyo Olympics, then exited last summer’s World Cup in the round of 16, its earliest departure from a major international tournament.
Yet it wasn’t just the results that raised eyebrows. In the last Olympics, the U.S. was tactically inept while at the World Cup the Americans looked overmatched and underwhelmed, failing to score in their final 238 minutes and failing to reach the semifinals for the first time ever. As a result the U.S., No. 1 in the world the last eight years, dropped to fourth in the latest FIFA rankings.
“The realities are the world game is where it is and the rest of the world do not fear the USA in the way that they once did,” the London-born Hayes said. “And that’s valid. There are different world champions, there are different Olympic champions. So it’s our job to grasp quite quickly what we need to do to get close again to those levels.”
Since Hayes is a coach and not a miracle worker, that will necessarily take time.
“It’s a process,” she said. “We’ve got to go one step at a time.”
U.S. women’s national soccer team coach Emma Hayes holds her 5-year-old son, Harry, after a 4-0 win over South Korea on Saturday.
(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
The start of that journey was delayed by Chelsea, the club team Hayes has coached since 2012. It refused to let her out of the final six months of her contract, which kept Hayes in England through the middle of May. So while she tried, through interim coach Twila Kilgore, to manage the team from afar during that time, only now is she getting the chance to implement her strategy and vision in person.
Doing that, she said, starts with building a foundation of trust, which is why she met individually with each of the 27 women she called into her first training camp as coach.
Next comes the long and complex task of introducing her playing style, one that, at Chelsea, was robust in the attack yet emphasized tactical flexibility.
“A lot of what we’ve done in the past six or seven months with her at Chelsea, you don’t get the on-the-field aspect,” captain Lindsey Horan said. “That’s the one big difference that you feel and you see. You finally get your coach out there on the field and the feeling you get, the leadership you get, that’s exciting.”
How long that honeymoon period will last is unknown, of course. The national team has historically included some of the biggest personalities in women’s soccer and that’s made it a minefield for coaches. A locker room revolt led to Tom Sermanni’s ouster in 2014 and three years later another group of veterans reportedly went to U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati to try to get Jill Ellis fired.
Gulati backed Ellis, who led the U.S. to a second straight world championship in 2019, but that was the last time the Americans climbed to the top of the medal podium at a major tournament. That decline did little to change the power structure around the team, however, so when players complained about difficult training sessions under Ellis’ successor, Vlatko Andonovski made the practices shorter.
The 16 trophies Hayes won at Chelsea plus her annual salary — reportedly $1.6 million, a record for a women’s coach — will likely make her immune to any attempted coups. Plus the team she’s been handed is one in transition.
In Paris, the U.S. will play in a major tournament without Megan Rapinoe, Carli Lloyd or Becky Sauerbrunn for the first time in two decades. If Alex Morgan, who has been battling an ankle injury, doesn’t make the team, the U.S. would have no players with more than 150 international caps and no former Olympic gold medalists on its roster for the first time since the 1996 Olympics.
In their place will be a squad led by Horan, a week past her 30th birthday, and twentysomethings Mallory Swanson, Naomi Girma, Catarina Macario and Sophia Smith. In fact, the lineup Hayes started in her debut averaged 25.5 years of age and 45 caps per player, making it the youngest starting 11 in more than two years.
“We’ve got a good combination in the group. There’s more experienced, less experienced players,” Hayes said. “This is, for us, a new beginning.”
But is it the kind of beginning she dreamed about? Or the beginning of something else?
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
Sports
Caitlin Clark to serve as analyst ahead of Lakers-Knicks game on NBC’s ‘Basketball Night in America’ debut
Wonder what Caitlin Clark thinks about the confusion surrounding Austin Reaves’ imminent return to the Lakers lineup? Or whether Jeanie Buss has turned on LeBron James? Or if she has nothing but praise for Luka Doncic?
Tune in to the Lakers’ matchup against the New York Knicks on the NBC Sports debut of “Basketball Night in America” on Sunday night to find out. Clark, the uber-popular WNBA star, will serve an analyst on the pregame show, beginning at 3 p.m. PT, one hour before tipoff.
Should Reaves return Friday or Sunday after missing a month with a left calf strain, it would mark only the seventh time the guard has played together with James and Doncic. That might be the first topic addressed by Clark, who will join the studio team of Maria Taylor and three former NBA stars: Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady.
Expectations that Reaves would take the floor Wednesday in a nationally televised game against the Cleveland Cavaliers were heightened Tuesday when ESPN insider Shams Charania posted on X that the Lakers guard would be “available to return to the lineup on Wednesday.”
A few moments later, however, the post was deleted with no explanation and the Lakers’ injury report lists Reaves as out.
Clark might stick to lauding Doncic, considering that the superstar NBA guard complimented her game in 2024, saying “that’s the women’s Steph Curry. She can shoot it better than me.”
Clark, who attended Iowa, is the all-time leading scorer in NCAA history. In two seasons with the Indiana Fever, she was named WNBA Rookie of the Year and is a two-time All-Star despite missing much of the 2025 season with a severe groin injury.
“Caitlin is one of the most captivating players and dynamic scorers in basketball,” NBC Sports Executive Producer Sam Flood said in a statement. “We’re excited to have Caitlin join Hall of Famers Melo, Vince, Tracy and Reggie in New York for the launch of Sunday Night Basketball.”
The Lakers-Knicks game will begin a doubleheader that also includes the Oklahoma City Thunder facing the Denver Nuggets.
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Earlier this month, the Pittsburgh Steelers entered a head coaching search for just the third time since hiring Chuck Noll in 1969.
On Jan. 13, Mike Tomlin announced he would step down after 19 seasons as the franchise’s head coach.
During the search for their next head coach, the Steelers interviewed a number of candidates, many of them young assistants in the vein of Noll, Mike Tomlin and Bill Cowher, all of whom arrived in Pittsburgh as relative unknowns and left with Super Bowl rings and Hall of Fame-worthy resumes.
During an introductory press conference with the Steelers that got emotional at times, McCarthy, a Pittsburgh native, beamed with pride about his third head coaching opportunity.
Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy at a news conference announcing him as the new Pittsburgh Steelers head coach at PNC Champions Club at Acrisure Stadium Jan. 27, 2026, in Pittsburgh. (Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images)
“I thought I’d at least be able to get started,” the new Steelers head coach said, trying unsuccessfully to choke back his emotions while looking out at members of the McCarthy family inside Acrisure Stadium.
McCarthy and Aaron Rodgers spent several years together when both were part of the Green Bay Packers. McCarthy coached the Packers to a 125-77-2 record from 2006-18. Rodgers left the Packers after the 2022 season. He spent two seasons with the New York Jets before signing a one-year deal with the Steelers last offseason.
Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy during the first half against the Washington Commanders at AT&T Stadium Jan. 5, 2025. (Kevin Jairaj/Imagn Images)
While Rodgers had a relatively productive first season with the Steelers, the 42-year-old quarterback is undoubtedly much closer to the sunset of his storied career than the onset. It is unclear whether Rodgers will return to the Steelers in 2026, pursue an opportunity with another team or simply step away from the game.
The possibility of a reunion between Rodgers and McCarthy was brought up during Tuesday’s news conference. McCarthy expressed optimism about potentially getting another shot at coaching Rodgers.
“Definitely, I don’t see why you wouldn’t,” McCarthy replied to reporters’ questions about possibly working with the four-time MVP.
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In 2022, ahead of Dallas Cowboys coach McCarthy’s return to Lambeau Field, Rodgers said the passage of time had given him a greater appreciation of the seasons he spent with his former coach.
“It’s probably normal in any relationship you have,” Rodgers said at the time. “When you’re able to take time away, and you have that separation, it’s natural to look back and have a greater sense of appreciation and gratitude and thankfulness for that time.”
Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy, right, speaks at a news conference introducing him as the next head coach of the Steelers as owner Art Rooney II listens in at PNC Champions Club at Acrisure Stadium Jan. 27, 2026, in Pittsburgh. (Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images)
McCarthy oversaw the Packers’ 2010 season when the franchise won its lone Super Bowl title during Rodgers’ career, but the relationship between the quarterback and coach eventually soured. McCarthy was fired late in the 2018 season.
Neither McCarthy nor his hometown Steelers have been back to the big game since. He knows the clock is ticking.
“It’s time to bring another championship back to this great city,” McCarthy said Tuesday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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It’s time to see which Mission League basketball teams are ready for some March Madness in February.
The tournament is set to begin Thursday after Tuesday’s final results clarified seedings.
The final game of the night was Crespi pulling out a 65-61 win over Loyola when Isaiah Barnes scored while falling down with 15 seconds left for the game-clinching basket. Despite the loss, Loyola claimed fourth place in the seedings while finishing in a three-way tie for fourth with Crespi and St. Francis.
The Cubs, though, are 14-14 and will need a win Saturday against the winner of Thursday’s Bishop Alemany (No. 8) vs. St. Francis (No. 5) game to keep alive their Southern Section playoff hopes. You need a .500 or better record to be considered for an at-large berth.
The other Thursday game has No. 7 Chaminade at No. 6 Crespi. That winner will play at Harvard-Westlake on Saturday.
Crespi was led by 6-foot-9 Rodney Mukendi, who scored 17 points. Deuce Newt had 15 points for Loyola.
Harvard-Westlake 90, St. Francis 56: Joe Sterling got back his shooting touch, making seven threes and finishing with 27 points. Amir Jones added 17 points for Harvard-Westlake. St. Francis did not play center Cherif Millogo.
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 81, Bishop Alemany 48: The Knights claimed second place in the Mission League and an automatic spot for the Southern Section playoffs. Zach White had 26 points and 10 rebounds. Notre Dame played without NaVorro Bowman.
Sierra Canyon 79, Chaminade 28: Brandon McCoy had 18 points and Maxi Adams added 17 points for the Mission League regular-season champions.
Crean Lutheran 76, La Habra 67: The Saints took over first place in the Crestview League.
Mira Costa 53, Peninsula 41: Logan Dugdale has 17 points and 10 rebounds for Mira Costa (23-4).
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