This is how Emma Hayes’ FA Cup record ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.
After everything that’s happened over the last two months, how else to start than with poetry? March started with dreams of quadruples and will end with a dream halved to a double. In a bad omen, the month of April will bring a Champions League semi-final against Barcelona; TS Eliot warned that it was the cruelest month.
Manchester United’s first ever victory over Chelsea ended Hayes’ hopes of winning a fourth successive FA Cup and sixth overall. A quarter-final defeat to Everton in 2020 was the last time Chelsea lost in this competition, since which Hayes’ reputation has been tarnished at almost every turn. There have been seven trophies since then – and an OBE, and commentary gigs with ITV that propelled Hayes into the mainstream, and work with the USWNT, and Sam Kerr, and Lauren James, and Hall of Fame inductions fame and the title of best FIFA coach. price.
Those who have attended a good portion of Hayes’ press conferences over the past few years have seen almost everything of the league’s so-called Renaissance Woman. We had meows. We had Emma Hayes: Attenborough Edition, via monologues about geese. We had Hayes’ childish enthusiasm, before the 2020 League Cup final, to play at the City Ground and lead her team at ‘Cloughie’s home’: she was ready to wear a green shirt in homage to the jumper Brian Clough’s signature green. and yellow shorts until his mother disputed that “green doesn’t go with blue”.
We had moments of vulnerability, with Hayes apologizing for his form after returning from the birth of his son, Harry. We had Star Wars, Toy Story, advocacy and promises of being passed out on a park bench somewhere with a bottle of gin to carry a fourth consecutive league title.
Then there were these last few weeks.
First, Hayes apologized for her comments about player-player relationships. Then there was the push. The accusation of “male assault” leveled against Arsenal manager Jonas Eidevall. And the controversial choice to recite a poem – the last four lines of Choose Something Like a Star by Robert Frost – when asked about it two weeks later.
Some have compared her to Eric Cantona. Others chose Mike Bassett. The BBC’s Ellen White and Rachel Brown-Finnis were among those wondering where Hayes’ apology was. Those who saw Hayes as a manager keen to deflect attention from the fact that she had escaped an FA charge felt it was a job well done.
The general reaction, however, was less admiring. It seemed like a rare misstep for a manager so adept at dealing with the media.
A difficult Friday then turned into a deadly Sunday. It took Manchester United 41 seconds to score the opener.
For United’s second goal, Ella Toone’s turn literally left Melanie Leupolz on her back. The sight of Erin Cuthbert and Johanna Rytting Kaneryd stalking Hannah Blundell and/or Leah Galton conjured up images of a beleaguered security guard trying to corner an escapee or cat burglar. “OK, you got me,” Lisa Naalsund seemed to say, before disappearing through the trap door and materializing beyond the Chelsea defense.
United have never made Chelsea look so unbalanced. In the end, Hayes’ body language betrayed a manager who knew the game was over: she met Fran Kirby’s foul touch at point-blank range with a resigned smile, and gave no real reaction to the game’s victory. ‘Ashley Lawrence on a corner just at the death. She’s been in the game long enough to know that sometimes the ball just doesn’t go in.
The post-match press conference initially gave us a more reserved Hayes. We couldn’t convince her to criticize the officials. “It was our turn to be the target of the referee’s big calls today in the box. It happens.”
Should Chelsea have received some penalties? “Yes, of course. But I can’t change that. I can’t change it. Isn’t she frustrated that she left the cup like that? “Of course, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
This continued, his answers were cut and precise. Was the month of April expected to see a sharp drop in results? In summary: “I’ll see at the end. » How did Lauren James behave? In full: “I haven’t analyzed it yet. » Will it be difficult to rally the players after two disappointments so close together? In full: “Yeah. Everyone is a competitor. Of course there will be disappointments.
Later she opened up: why does women’s football have VAR for some matches and not others? Civil servants need more help. Niamh Charles had been baffled by some of the calls. When players can hear their own fans chanting these decisions with the same bewilderment they feel, it becomes even more frustrating. This was more like Hayes’ usual scenario.
To say that Hayes’ star has risen over the past few years seems a bit off: it’s far too lonely a way to describe what Hayes’ trajectory has meant. Over time, whether intentionally or not, she became the face and spokesperson for the entire sport. Its platform is the largest. His words are the heaviest. His thoughts go further. “To help our officials, we need to have technology in our game,” she expressed with anguish over penalties that never existed. The decision to read the poem, as ill-advised as it was, was just as carefully chosen and carefully weighed.
This is not unusual by this measure; the difference is how it landed.
This is the reality for Hayes, as the WSL’s most famous manager. In recent years, Hayes has criticized the widespread mythologizing of her and her methods: the title of the leadership manual she co-authored, the audiobook Kill The Unicorn, aims to debunk the myth that any leader is the chosen one who has everything. the answers to everything all the time. This is the role the world has wrongly assigned to Hayes as a manager who will speak publicly about battling endometriosis, life as a working mother and the countless ways the women’s game fails its players.
With the USWNT, given its long history of player activism, perhaps that burden could be shared a little more equitably.
On Sunday, Hayes chose to stop giving all the answers. This year will be the first time since 2005 that the FA Cup will be won by a team other than Chelsea, Arsenal or Manchester City. When asked what this meant for the health of the wider women’s game, Hayes said she didn’t really have an opinion.
After all, her fans sometimes have enough to go around. They did not appreciate her emphasizing that, despite the defeat, “no one died” and that success this year would give the impression that everyone “made it out alive.” Hayes checked, they said on social media; she’s too focused on the United States to worry about winning everything she won before.
To me it seemed more like an attempt at self-preservation by a manager working two jobs.
Hayes has always alluded to the psychological exhaustion that comes with being a serial winner. Many admire Hayes’ ability to reinvent his team each season, but more impressive is carrying the mental load year after year.
Managers know there will be days like this. They should feel the pain as much as everyone else but not too deeply, and yearn for what they have already won five times with the desperation of the player who experiences it for the first time but with the wisdom of those for whom it is old news. , and cry and commiserate and clap and toast when it can only hurt a lot after all this time and all this life lived.
In short, they must be everything to everyone, at all times.
It makes sense that Hayes emphasizes the lines “So when sometimes the crowd is swayed / To push praise or blame too far.” That doesn’t mean she deployed them at the right time on Friday.
It’s not by far the most trying period of Hayes’ career, but it is the most scrutinized. There are more eyes on her than ever, on both sides of the Atlantic. In recent weeks, she has become a more polarizing figure than many expected.
She left the press conference to the United fans, who spotted her through the glass doors, chanting “Hayes pack her bags”. Those words won’t seriously hurt a manager who has enjoyed enough days in the sun, as grueling as this month has been for his team, but most in the Women’s Super League are intrigued by how Hayes will handle the ‘balance.
Perhaps the lesson of all this — and the one Hayes wants everyone to take away — is that she is human after all, as fallible and imperfect as the rest of us.
(Top photo: Chelsea Football Club/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)