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
Indy 500: Counting Down The 10 Best Finishes In Race History
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The best Indianapolis 500 finish could be subjective, depending on which driver a fan was rooting for to win.
It certainly is in the eye of the beholder.
So take this list for what it’s worth. One view of the 10 best finishes in Indianapolis 500 history. Of course, it skews to more recent decades when the runs have come a little faster and the finishes have had a tendency to be a little closer.
We’ll add one each day to this list of fantastic finishes ahead of the 110th running of the Indy 500 on May 24 (12:30 p.m. ET on FOX).
10. Ericsson outduels O’Ward (2022)
After a red flag, Marcus Ericsson held off Pato O’Ward in a two-lap shootout. The shootout didn’t last two laps, though, as there was a crash on the final lap behind them. Ericsson had a comfortable lead when the red flag came out for a crash with four laps to go, a situation where in past Indianapolis 500 races, they likely would have ended the race under caution with Ericsson as the winner.
9. Foyt survives chaos (1967)
How does a driver who wins by two laps end up on this list? It’s because the win nearly didn’t happen on the last lap. A big crash with cars and debris littering the frontstretch just ahead of Foyt as he came to the checkered flag forced him to navigate through the wreckage for the win.
8. Sato can’t catch Franchitti (2012)
This was one of those finishes where the leader holds on for the win, but boy did the leader have to hold on. Takuma Sato tried to pass Dario Franchitti early on the final lap but to no avail and Franchitti sped off for the victory. This was one of those Indy 500s that made you hold your breath all the way to the checkered flag.
Sports
UCLA softball pummels South Carolina to advance to NCAA super regional
No. 8 UCLA stuck with right-hander Taylor Tinsley throughout the Los Angeles Regional and that faith in the senior paid off.
During the Bruins’ NCAA tournament opener at Easton Stadium, Tinsley gave up 10 runs before her teammates rallied for a walk-off win. She returned less than 24 hours to pitch against South Carolina, giving up two earned runs in a victory. Tinsley was back in the circle Sunday afternoon, yielding one run in UCLA’s 15-1 victory over the Gamecocks to advance to the super regionals.
“I am proud of Taylor’s resiliency, the ability to do whatever she can to help this team,” UCLA coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said. “She got stronger through the weekend. I am proud of that.”
Tinsley and her teammates will host Central Florida in a super regional that begins Friday.
“I feel good,” Tinsley said after pitching three key games in three days. “I could have gone more innings if needed.”
South Carolina right-hander Jori Heard gave up only one hit through two innings, keeping UCLA’s potent bats relatively quiet. The Gamecocks had runners on first and second with two outs in the second, but Tinsley escaped the inning with a pop-up to left field.
The Bruins got on the board first with a two-run home run from left fielder Rylee Slimp in the third inning. The Bruins followed it up by loading the bases with no outs in the fifth for right fielder Megan Grant.
Grant cooked up a grand slam to make it 6-0. She has 40 home runs, extending her hold on the NCAA single-season home run record. Oklahoma freshman Kendall Wells trails Grant with 37 homers.
“Its just incredible because I am blessed to be able to say the number 40,” Grant said.
South Carolina broke through on an RBI single from left fielder Quincee Lilio to cut UCLA’s lead to 6-1 in the fifth inning after being held to just one hit since the first inning. The Gamecocks couldn’t cash in the rest of the way.
The Bruins resumed scoring in the sixth inning, with the bases loaded and Grant at bat again. Fans at Easton Stadium anticipated another grand slam, holding up their cellphones hoping to catch some magic. Grant served up a two-run RBI single to expand the lead 8-1.
Jordan Woolery added to the scoring with a two-run RBI double down the left-field line, and Kaniya Bragg hit a home run to left-center field. Soo-jin Berry put a bow on the win with one more home run.
Sports
Pro wrestling star learns what ‘land of opportunity’ means in US as he details journey from Italy to America
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Cristiano Argento has been tearing up opponents in the ring for the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) as he worked his way up the ladder to get a few shots at some gold.
But the path to get to one of the most prestigious pro wrestling companies in the U.S. was long and a path that not many wrestlers have taken.
Argento was born and raised in Osimo, Italy – a town of about 35,000 people located on the east side of the country closer to the Adriatic Sea. He told Fox News Digital he started training in a ring at a boxing gym before he got started on the independent scene in Italy. He wrestled in Germany, Sweden, France and Denmark before he came to the realization that, to become a professional wrestler, he needed to make his way to the United States.
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Cristiano Argento performs in the National Wrestling Alliance (Instagram)
He first worked his way to Canada to get trained by pro wrestling legend Lance Storm. He moved to Canada, leaving most of his friends and family behind and without a firm grasp on the English language.
“At the time, my English was horrible. I didn’t speak any English at all,” he said. “But I was with my friend, Stefano, he came with me and he translated everything for me. I probably missed 50% of the knowledge that Lance Storm was giving to us because I was unable to understand. I was only given a recap and everything I was able to see. I’m sure if I was doing it now with a proper knowledge of English, it would have been a different scenario.
“Eventually, I moved back to Italy after the training and I said, OK, now, I want to go to the U.S. So, I studied English more properly, and eventually I got my first work visa that was in Texas. I was in Houston for a short period of time. I trained with Booker T at Reality of Wrestling. I got on his show, which was my debut in the U.S. That was awesome. I eventually got a new work visa in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I currently live since 2017. Since then, my wrestling career, thankfully, kept growing, growing, growing and growing until now wrestling for the NWA. One of the bigger promotions in the U.S.”
Argento said that his family thought he was “nuts” for chasing his pro wrestling dream.
He said they were more concerned about his well-being given that he was half-way around the world without anyone he knew by his side in case something went sideways.
“My family, friends, everybody was like why do you want to move to the opposite side of the world not knowing the language, not knowing anybody, by yourself, to try to become a professional wrestler? And I was like, well, we have one life, I love, and that’s what I’m gonna do,” he told Fox News Digital. “Eventually, my family was really supportive. But when I first said, ‘Hey, mom and dad, I want to do that.’ They looked at me like, ‘Are you nuts? Are you drunk or something? What are you talking about?’ And I said, no that’s what I want to do. And they knew I loved this sport because in Italy I was traveling around Europe, spending time in Canada training, so they started to understand slowly that’s what I want to do with my life. They were proud of me.
Cristiano Argento works out in the gym. (Instagram)
“They’re still proud of me. I think more like the fact that you’re gonna try that, that it’s hard than more like you’re gonna leave us. The fact like, oh, my son is gonna go on the opposite side of the world for a six-hour time difference and we’re gonna see him maybe, when, like, I don’t know. Not often. I think it was more that. And for me too, it was really hard. It was heartbreaking not being able to see my family every day or every month. Like once a year if I’m lucky. I think that was the biggest part for them because of concern or that I was here by myself and if I have any issue or any problem, I didn’t have nobody. So they were scared. Like, you get sick, if you have a problem, anything, and they’re not being able to be here next to me. But they were really supportive since day one.”
Argento is living out his dream in the U.S. He suggested that the moniker of the U.S. being the “land of opportunity” wasn’t far from what is preached in movies and literature – it was the real thing.
“I was inspired by people who came to the U.S. and made it big,” Argento told Fox News Digital. “The U.S. was always like the land of opportunity. That’s how they sell it to us and this is what it is. I feel like, in myself, that was true because anything I tried to do so far I was able to reach a lot more than if I wasn’t here. I’m not yet where I’d like to be but I see like there’s so many opportunities in this country. Not just in wrestling but like in any business to reach the goal. I’m really happy of the choices I did here.
National Wrestling Alliance star Cristiano Argento poses in Times Square in New York. (Instagram)
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“But my big inspirations were big-time actors who moved to the country, who didn’t know English, with no money, no support system. I had one dream, I have to go right there to make it happen and I’m gonna go and do it and I’m gonna make it happen. So those people were always the biggest inspiration even if it wasn’t in wrestling, just how they handled their passion, how they pursued their dream without being scared of anything, how far you are, how alone by yourself … You don’t know the language, you’re like, let’s go, let’s do it.”
Outside of the NWA, Argento has performed for the International Wrestling Cartel, Enjoy Wrestling and Exodus Pro Wrestling this year.
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