LYON, France — Emma Hayes wanted her players to suffer.
On Monday, the U.S. women’s national team head coach showed her team a video of ultramarathoner Courtney Dauwalter discussing how she digs deep during 100-mile races. Dauwalter enters what she calls her “pain cave” during races. With every mile, Dauwalter imagines herself in a hard hat with a chisel, picking at the walls of the pain cave, tolerating more and more and more.
“I could see today that players were having to dig to the deepest place within them,” Hayes said Tuesday, following their second consecutive extra-time win in the semifinal against Germany.
“I’ve said this all along — the reason I want to play the team together for as long as possible is because I want them to develop that. I want them to suffer. I want them to have that moment because I do not believe you can win without it.”
A year to the day after they were bounced from the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Melbourne, the U.S. survived and advanced. In four days, back in Paris, the U.S. will have a chance to win a gold medal. The team is not the same as it was a year ago. Right now, they’re tired, forced to dig deep mentally with each new game at the Olympics. Now, just one more to go.
During her 100-mile runs, Dauwalter has had to run blind through parts of those ultramarathons. If Dauwalter can do that, Hayes said, the U.S. is more than capable of digging deep in the France heat. They weren’t the only ones fatigued from the format or the limited rosters.
Still, there were things Hayes didn’t like about the game and adjustments she tried to make against Germany.
“It’s not about that. It’s about how you just have to dig something out,” Hayes said. “It’s heart and head, and that our group wants to create a new history for themselves. They did enough to get us into the final, and that’s just the next step. We have to take the next step.”
U.S. players credit Hayes for her leadership. (Photo by Claudio Villa, Getty Images)
Even as the team has had to grind out results to advance to the final on Saturday, every time the players came through the mixed zone after a match, the mood was nothing but celebratory (with perhaps a soupçon of admitting their fatigue, especially Tuesday). Hayes was no different after the team’s second win over Germany in this tournament.
She’s having a great time, actually. She’s not someone who wants to carry pressure on them. She’s enjoying the team’s company. She pointed to the ‘99ers and their influence on the team, the little extra boost of confidence they offered during one of the team’s final friendlies.
“We’ve been building a really psychologically safe space for all of us,” she said. “There’s friendships that are really strong internally. There is a collective will.”
She didn’t call it perfect, but she did call it progress.
The players have been extremely consistent in their praise for what Hayes has brought to the team in their brief time together. Tuesday’s game-winning goalscorer, Sophia Smith, offered the latest entry in how the players appreciate their new head coach.
“We’re a different team since she’s come in. She’s so hilarious and chill and funny, and I feel like that’s exactly what we needed. We have the players, we have the talent, we just needed someone to come in and believe in us and put us in the best position to succeed,” Smith said. “Emma’s doing exactly that.”
Goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher said that it’s clear the team is buying into Hayes’s vision, but it goes beyond that too.
“She’s somebody that is human, and she humanizes herself to the team and the players. People respond well to that,” Naeher said. “She’s the kind of coach that you want to play for, you want to compete for. You can feel that she’s in your corner, and she’s not going to take it easy on anybody, that’s for sure.”
Naeher’s last-minute save sealed the USWNT’s gold medal match berth. (Photo by Brad Smith, Getty Images)
As intense as Hayes can be as a coach, that only helps when she instructs the players. Naeher said the feedback is coming from a positive place, even if it is critical.
“She knows that you can do it and believes in you,” she said. “That belief goes a long way.”
Emma Hayes has focused on the details on the field, but she’s gotten the smaller ones right in the USWNT environment too: like how she booked a nail technician for the players here in France, knowing she got the timing right.
There’s no direct correlation between that and two knockout wins, but it’s building something larger. That’s the stuff that makes running blind easier, that makes the suffering just a little bit more tolerable — because the players know they’re all in it together.
It’s her coaching elements and the demand for excellence, but it also helps that Hayes is just Hayes — always a little larger than life, a little goofy, quick with a line (even if the players don’t always understand those lines). She called the final group stage match against Australia “a banana skin game” before the team explained in America it’s called a trap game. Everyone’s learning, after all.
And at the end of the day, Hayes just loves a bit of banter. Getting ushered out of the mixed zone by the U.S. Soccer press officer, someone quickly asked if Hayes would prefer Spain or Brazil in the final.
“I don’t care,” she replied, quick as ever. “I want a drink.”
(Top photo: Claudio Villa/Getty Images)
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