Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2022

79 78 part of what young players now have to deal with. Last night, we heard David Beckham talking about the criticism that he got walking into a restaurant. Well imagine if that happened now in the modern era because people are so mean. I think this is where I think the mental health component is critical. The level of scrutiny and venom that’s out there, I think that is something that we have to help educate and protect our young players. I think there needs to be more legislation to help manage social media because I think it’s a very dangerous thing. I think that’s something that in my later years as a coach I had to manage but in my early years I didn’t. Also, now you are dealing with agents. They are a layer between a coach and a player, it’s a layer now between management that you have to navigate. You can’t stick your head in the sand and ignore the fact that there are agents and players are building their brands and they are so much more than just football. I think that’s what’s hard for a coach now. Where coaches love to live is in tactics and on the pitch, that is the sweet spot but now it’s managing personnel, managing egos, managing the whole piece. I think you have to be very adept in the management of people now as a coach. For the coach of the United States women’s soccer team, it’s obviously a very large country and you’re away from the players. It’s difficult to have that interconnection and that will continue to be a challenge even though we have zoom and we can talk on the phone, that’s still a big challenge for coaches in the United States. It is and when you are a national team coach, you get very limited time so really establishing that connection is critical. When you are with a club, and you have them daily. You are going to build that relationship; you are going to get to know their families you are going to get to know their routines a lot more than when you just have them together for 10 days and you have got two matches to play. I always say players have to feel that they matter to you as a person. They can’t just be a player. You have to have a connection, I think ultimately, we are in a people business. When I was a young coach, I always used to want to find a different way of teaching something. So, if we were working on our build out, I was thinking I’m going to do it this way this time and this way because I felt like I needed to be Innovative and change it up well. The reality is consistency of message is very important, especially when you are not together very much, so whenever the team got back together, we would have an intro meeting. A kind of a hello and here’s the plan of the camp, and then the next day before we went to training, we had what I called ‘’a reset meeting’’ where we were just to remember how we play. My players may have played man to man in their environment but now we are doing zonal, or they may have played in a high press with us and they are sitting in a low block so you have to kind of reset as to remember here’s our values and expectations. This is kind of who we are, this is our DNA, this is our identity to kind of reset and I think that really helped us stay connected when they went back to their clubs. I was always very respectful of not trying to bother them. They have to meet the demands of that environment they are in. What I tried to build was a relationship with their club coach that we didn’t see as your player, my player, we saw them as our player. I would have constant communication with the club coach, which was critical. It was everything from managing minutes, to knowing that we were traveling, to understanding where they were in their season. They are going into their playoff round so that was critical because I think the player didn’t feel this back and forth, they felt that both sides were going to work together to build cooperation. One of the things I tried to do was, every year, to bring every club coach into our environment to meet with our sports scientists. We would bring in their sports scientists, we would really try and feel that this was a collaboration because at the end of the day if our national team did well our domestic league does well, the tickets went off the charts. If we are winning, if we are competing for World Cups, it benefited everybody and in the same regard if our club world was strong and competitive it helped us with the National Team. I think that was something that I really pushed with our federation and with our league that we had to have this collaboration and cooperation. With San Diego wave, you are the President, but you have made an incredible impact there. Just last month, you had the highest ticket sales ever in a women’s league game in the United States, so what you are doing right as a president? Everyone in this room is sporting but sometimes because you’ve lived the landscape and when I started this team, I could have started it from two angles. I could have started it from the business side. Meaning I’m going to hire my revenue officer, my ticketing manager but instead I started it through the lens that I’m most familiar with which is the sporting side. My first hire was my general manager who was my right hand with the National Team, and my Coach. Ultimately, I looked at it that if we have a good product on the field, if we are competitive from there, the fans will come and sponsorships will come. We launched very quickly but I think I listen as a coach. Sure, I wanted a full house but I never really cared to the degree of ‘’Oh my God we have to sell tickets now!’’ We have got to work with this and it’s different but I took this job because after 30 years on the sideline, it was where else can I grow and stretch myself but stay connected to the game? I think when you get a little bit older you reach a point in your life where it’s not so much about what you are doing, it’s more about what you can create for those that come after. I saw this as an opportunity to strengthen our domestic League, knowing our domestic league would be strong I felt would continue to help us be competitive at the National Team level. It was something that was not inside my wheelhouse, not familiar ground for me. I think at the end of the day when you hire great people and empower them, you build a great culture. I think you can create a recipe for success. What are your thoughts on seeing England, the Lionesses winning the EURO’s? You were born in Portsmouth in England. What are your thoughts on the impact that that victory for England had on the women’s game in England? When I was there, women weren’t even allowed to play. I used to play in the schoolyard with my brother, so it almost took me leaving the country I love to go and find my passion for football. It’s so amazing to see just how competitive, how far the game has come. You get 90,000 at a Barcelona game, you get 50,000 for the Tottenham vs. Arsenal game so I think the reality is football is the sport for women now globally. We’ve known for a long time, it’s a sport for men but it’s the sport for women and I think for all of us in this room sport is a gift, it’s given us so many things. A career, a family, a voice. It’s been such a gift and so I think we can share this with people more and that’s why a World Cup shines a massive light on something that brings people together, it’s the competition. Ultimately it brings countries together to root for their team, it brings nations together to compete in a friendly atmosphere. I think that’s the beauty of sport and so for me I’m delighted that England’s had the success they have but more importantly our game is continuing to evolve at such a fast level. Let’s turn to the World Cup, what are the challenges facing the 32 Nations? I think about this especially from the sports science side. It’s managing the entry as everybody is coming from a different place. For the American team, they’re at the end of their season so they’re having to manage burn out and fatigue, but for other teams they’re in the middle of their season so I think it’s how you navigate the management of players. We were even to the point of it has to be so specific, we went player by player in our management because you might have players that are playing 90 minutes, you might have players that are coming in as reserves. I think this customizing and making sure that in that very first match, every single player is there and ready to perform so some coming in might need rest, some coming in might need topping up in terms of their fitness. I remember in 2015, I brought in Alex Morgan knowing that she wasn’t going to be ready until the quarterfinals so actually brought an injured player in with the hope of if we get this right, she’ll be ready to go by this point. So, I think understanding your team well enough to say how do I get everybody ready and available? I said to my medical team the number one gift you can give to me is to have players available for selection. That was also a message I gave to the players, the number one way you can help us be successful is to be available for selection. That means if you’re feeling tightness, pull yourself out and manage your body, it’s being professional, it’s making sure that the team is put first. One of the things tactically that we decided to do because you have very little time to prepare, is we scouted the World Cup opponents and we looked at what are the commonalities between all of the opponents we’re facing. They all played a back four so we can prepare for that, because when we got to our pre-camp in