U.S. NATIONAL TEAM TRAINING CENTER (Fayetteville, Ga.) – The epiphany came to Emma Hayes about a decade ago. She was well into her coaching tenure at Chelsea and her team had just lost to rival Arsenal, 1-0, in the 2016 FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium.
When Hayes talks about this moment, she explains the Gunners deserved to win that game. What she couldn’t see at the time – but very clearly understands now – is why her players were so off that day. Their reaction times were slower than normal and their coordination was like "watching a group of people that looked separated from their bodies," Hayes recently told a small group of reporters at the U.S.
Soccer National Training Center near Atlanta. "I remember in the middle of the game thinking, ‘What’s wrong with them?’" Hayes continued. "‘Is it their nerves?’" Hayes later learned her players were at different points in their menstrual cycles and that, in some cases, those hormonal fluctuations were affecting their performance.
She was at a loss. "Why don’t I know these things?" she asked herself. Brain fog, fluid retention, inflammation, cramping, pelvic floor issues – these are things women know all too well.
This caused Hayes to think about her own body – she’s been open about her endometriosis diagnosis – and how little she really knew. In her players’ case, they were navigating this while trying to compete at the highest level. "We’re asking players to perform in a culture that says, ‘Oh, you’ve got a period?
Sit out,’" Hayes said. "I was like, ‘It’s not good enough. We don’t want to sit out." Since then, Hayes has made it her life’s work to normalize conversations around women’s health and transform what was once treated as a taboo topic into a superpower.
Through her own research, she discovered there is no degree devoted solely on female physiology. If she wanted to truly understand women’s bodies, she would have to build that education herself – seeking out scientists, former players, coaches and other like-minded people who were asking the same questions. So she did.
The result is an entire ecosystem – first at Chelsea and now as the U.S. women’s national team manager – created around putting the female lens "at the heart of everything we do." Part of the end goal is that this contributes to developing a team to win. The Americans are preparing for the 2027 World Cup in Brazil and then the Olympics on home soil in 2028. The squad is currently in the middle of an international window – they fell to Spain 2-0 in a friendly on Saturday and will face the defending World Cup champions again on Tuesday – before turning focus to qualifying for next summer’s tournament in November.
The other part, though, is larger than that. Hayes and her passionate staff want to share their findings with women and girls at every level of the sport. Which is why Hayes and U.S.
Soccer opened the second annual HerLens Conference – which was held internally last year – to 300 people, ranging from NWSL general managers to youth soccer coaches at the National Training Center earlier this month. The two-day event included interactive sessions about bias and inclusivity, why girls stay or leave the game, building women- and girls-centric team culture, and more. And she introduced attendees to the term "Female 360," a holistic approach that considers every aspect of the female player’s experience on and off the field.
"For me, this is more than winning on the pitch," Hayes said. "This is transformational. I think my purpose, my mission, came from a losing situation and I felt robbed.
I felt denied. I felt like, how have I, at this stage of my life, [not known] these things about myself?" HAYES TOOK OVER as the U.S. national team head coach a few weeks before the 2024 Paris Olympics. It was a whirlwind way to begin a new job, and she led a group of players she’d only just met to a gold medal.
Afterward, she surveyed every player and staff member: "OK, where do we go from here?" A couple of months later, Hayes introduced her approach for reframing women’s soccer through a female lens in an effort to not just copy and paste a game inherited from men. She’s been instilling her vision ever since. "It was like a light bulb went off in my brain, like, ‘Yeah, duh!’" U.S. and Manchester City midfielder Sam Coffey told me.
"It was like, ‘Wow, this makes so much sense. How am I just recognizing this?’ It was almost like catching my own bias and my own acceptance for how things had been up until that point." A fundamental part of Hayes’ methodology is the recognition that women and men have distinct needs, from nutrition, sleep and recovery to uniforms and even the placement of scales outside the locker room. Her staff has examined data revealing differences in how male and female players cross the ball into the box and how much space goalkeepers take up within it.
What works for men doesn’t necessarily work for women, and building a better blueprint starts with understanding those differences. "I think so much of the women's game has just been dominated by what we know to be true of male players instead of, hang on a second, these are completely different athletes," said Coffey, who was part of the squad that won Olympic gold two years ago. "And that’s not a weakness or a disadvantage.
It’s just, how do we best serve us instead of how do you get the best out of men. Because we’re not men." Hayes calls the senior team her "proving lab" and the National Training Center serves as an incubator for new ideas – a space to think critically, connect and reimagine what’s possible. The goal is for those principles to extend beyond the national team, reaching youth clubs and soccer communities across the country.
With support from the federation and its CEO and secretary general JT Batson, Hayes hopes to transform the future of the game for women and girls. The 2031 World Cup, which the U.S. plans to co-host, offers a chance to see how much progress can be made when the needs of female athletes are at the center of the conversation. "Emma wants us to be trendsetters," Tash Patel, director of sporting analytics for the women’s national team, said during her classroom session about coaching the women’s game.
That’s what this program has always been known for. From winning World Cups to finding ways to start families while continuing to play to fighting for equal pay, the national team has consistently pushed the game forward, striving to leave it better than they found it and serve as role models around the world. This is simply the next iteration of that legacy.
THE IMPACT THIS has had on the players has been transformative. Hayes has seen their confidence grow as they’ve gained more knowledge, and Coffey can attest to this. She’s more comfortable speaking openly about where she is in her cycle and how her body feels, whether she’s competing for club or country.
Georgie Bruinvels, the female health and research innovation lead for the team, has played an integral role in spearheading much of this. She tracks the players’ cycles and Oura Ring stats – only if they are willing as this is not mandatory – to better understand each player’s individual needs and how to best support them. "She’s always looking for little 1% ways to approach things from a female point of view, down to the temperature of our meeting room," Coffey said, noting that it should be 68 degrees because that’s the temperature that women process information most efficiently.
"I’ll be filling my plate for dinner and she’s like, ‘I would get extra anti-inflammatory foods if I were you!’ And I'm like, ‘All I want is chocolate, but OK!’" Coffey said, laughing. "All these little things add up over time and cumulatively make such an impact on how we feel and how we perform. "They’re detailed down to the T.
It’s not just taking an ibuprofen and calling it a day. And I've noticed a difference." As for how this entire mindset is spreading across the sport, Coffey said she brings back habits from national team camp to Man City – like the "yogurt pot" parfait recipe that Bruinvels has introduced her to. "In my club and country environments, I do 100% feel like nothing is a hand-me-down," Coffey said.
"It feels tailored to being a female and we’re only going deeper in our understanding of that, which is super cool." While Hayes’ strategy may end up giving the Americans a competitive edge – because not every team or federation will have these same resources – all of this information is not something they plan to gatekeep. "I want every little girl and woman, no matter what your practice is in our sport, to feel like this is more than just playing the game," Hayes said. "I think we can impact society in a profound way."
