Former U.S. national team coach Jill Ellis was in Zurich last November as part of a FIFA mentoring program when her friend, France national team coach Corinne Diacre, stood up to speak to the group of women in attendance.
Diacre shared stories from her experience coaching a men’s professional team, Clermont Foot, in France’s Ligue 2. The room buzzed during the presentation as Diacre talked about how the opportunity arose, about what it was like to work with an owner who felt she was the right fit and about what made the job different from her previous gigs.
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“We just drilled her with questions,” Ellis said.
In the end, the conclusion Diacre reached was much the same as the one Ellis found while taking part in U.S. Soccer’s pro licensing course along with several MLS coaches: The job of coaching men is no different than the job of coaching women.
“The game is the game and managing players is managing players,” Ellis said. “The things we discussed most frequently weren’t tactics; it was player-management situations, because there is no handbook for that. That’s based on experience. And when you drill into it and talk about it all, we’re dealing with very, very similar issues. It’s the same requirements of the job.”
As more women move into coaching roles in professional men’s sports — prominent examples include Becky Hammon in the NBA, Katie Sowers in the NFL and, most recently, Alyssa Nakken in MLB — there has not yet been a woman hired as a coach or assistant coach in Major League Soccer. It’s a fact many believe will change in coming years, and one that several MLS coaches said the league is ready for.
“What prevents it?” said Philadelphia Union coach Jim Curtin during a preseason interview. “I don’t have an answer, because we’re certainly better at women’s soccer than we are at men’s soccer in this country. There’s some irony in that. I’d say it’s time. I do believe it’s time for it to happen.”
What will it take for that barrier to come down? An open mind and an opportunity.
Ellis recently stepped down as the winningest coach in U.S. women’s national team history, with two World Cups to her name, and she’s enjoying her time away from the sideline. Jumping back into coaching is not her highest priority.
She is working now as an ambassador for U.S. Soccer, and in that role she hopes to increase the number of women coaching in soccer, including through a scholarship program in her name set up by the USSF. Ellis has received job offers since stepping away from the national team, in the NWSL and abroad, including multiple offers to coach in the men’s game — both in the U.S., with a USL team and a college team, and overseas. But no offers have come from MLS.
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And in any case, there are very few jobs, in men’s or women’s soccer, that would qualify as more interesting or weightier than the one Ellis recently left.
“In terms of job and requirements, I probably had one of the most high-pressure jobs in the world,” Ellis said. “Second place is unacceptable. Losing a game is not common. In terms of responsibilities and pressures — 50,000 people in the stadium for big games — I’ve been in situations where it’s even, at times, bigger than certain levels in the men’s game, in terms of pressures and viewership and fan base. I don’t suddenly see this as a massive leap, I just see it as a different opportunity. … If it was what I wanted to do and I wanted to actively pursue it, I wouldn’t have an issue.”
Still, the fact that Ellis has not even received formal interest from an MLS team, not even as an assistant coach, should be considered somewhat surprising. As she notes, she has performed at the highest level, under pressure far exceeding that which coaches typically encounter in Major League Soccer. And while Ellis is not actively pursuing an opportunity in the men’s game, she also hasn’t closed the door on it. The multiple-World-Cup-winner says that in spite of her accomplishments, she would be open to joining a staff as an assistant coach.
“To be very candid, if I was motivated purely by money, yes I would want to jump in the men’s game because that’s where the money is,” she said. “In terms of coaching high-level athletes, I’ve coached the best in the world. To want to go coach in MLS, it’s not this burning desire to coach men; it’s that it’d be a different challenge or opportunity. I’ve coached club, youth national teams, senior national teams, college. In the women’s game. I’ve coached at every level. It would be looking at a different opportunity. I wouldn’t be averse to be an assistant because it would be an opportunity for growth and that’s something I’ve loved to do.”
Ellis may still be undecided about coaching a men’s team, but at least one team in MLS has already batted around the idea of bringing her on board, and others will likely follow.
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“We’ve talked a lot about this in the last year,” D.C. United head coach Ben Olsen said earlier this year, during an interview at the club’s training camp in Bradenton, Fla. “Her name has come up in meetings where we’ve talked about staff — several women have. In (D.C. United’s) world, it’s just a case of not really having any vacancies. But if there were, we would be actively considering those candidates. There are plenty of women out there that are ready to take that step. We’ve talked about it, we’ve talked about individuals that would make sense to make that transition.”
Olsen himself represents the path so many of MLS’s coaches have followed: a former player tapped just after retirement to make the transition to the technical area. Major League Soccer’s coaching tree does not have the broadest of canopies. In one way or another, many of its coaches — especially those who were born in the United States — can be connected back to Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley, two early giants of the league. (Bradley was an assistant to Arena on several teams as well.) Those coaches have long-standing relationships with assistants, often bringing them along as they move from team to team. And this loyalty often means there isn’t a lot of opportunity to bring in new people. Even if there were, teams are frequently hesitant to break the mold.
Crossover between the men’s and women’s game, even off the field, has also been lacking, something Curtin has noticed during his time at the helm in Philadelphia.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think that a lot of people in men’s soccer have good relationships with people in women’s soccer,” Curtin reflected. “It can be a bit too much like a fraternity; when I took the PRO course, it was 14 dudes; you can sort of guess all of them. (Gregg) Berhalter, me, Benny Olsen, you can go down the list. The next group actually did it with Jill Ellis and every person that I talked to was like ‘holy shit.’”
Those who took the class with Ellis, Curtin says, were impressed not only with her coaching acumen but with her ability to blend in with the group after hours. At the bar after sessions, Ellis and her classmates traded beers, war stories and tactical tips like old colleagues.
“That part of it was good,” said Curtin. “They all had real positive reactions to it. But still, how do you set it up? Men’s and women’s soccer are almost thought of as two different sports, which is wrong, and stupid, but unfortunately that’s sort of how it is.”
In the men’s game, it’s very possible that any woman might face some of the same adversity female coaches face in the women’s game itself, where male coaches sometimes get more room for error. In MLS, many of the league’s longest-serving head coaches have suffered through more than one run of awful form, a luxury some teams may be hesitant to afford someone they perceive as an unknown commodity, fairly or not.
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There’s the matter, too, of how much control a woman coaching for the first time in MLS would be given. Diacre’s predecessor at Clermont Foot, Helena Costa, quit her post after less than a month — and before her first training session — citing what she felt was the club’s amateurish attitude and the fact that management had signed players without her prior approval.
To Montreal Impact coach Thierry Henry, things feel simpler. When asked earlier this spring for his take on the lack of women coaching in MLS, Henry pointed to Diacre as an example showing that qualified coaches deserve a chance to work in the men’s game regardless of their identity.
“I don’t look at gender with a coach, for me personally,” Henry said. “I look at one thing: are you qualified? That’s what it comes down to for me. In Europe, you need to have your badges. If you don’t have them, of course, it becomes more difficult to become a coach, whether you’re a woman or a man. … We had Corrine Diacre, who was a second-division coach. I think if you’re qualified, whether you’re a woman or not, it doesn’t even matter. And there should be more, for sure.”
Henry’s attitude, his wish for an egalitarian system based on merit, is genuine. But if the right attitude was all it took to solve the problem of the lack of diversity in MLS’s head coaching ranks — if it were as simple as hiring the most qualified candidate, regardless of gender or race or any other classification — the roster of coaches in MLS would look very, very different right now.
When Kim Wyant stepped in to coach the men’s soccer team at New York University, it was supposed to be an interim role.
NYU’s coach had stepped down early in the 2015 season and the Violets needed someone to take over for the rest of the year. Wyant, who had coached multiple women’s programs and was an assistant for NYU’s women’s team at the time, stepped up for the job. She didn’t have much time to consider the fact that she was now the only woman coaching a men’s soccer team in the NCAA.
The first time she met with the team, the focus was on calming the chaos around a program suddenly in flux.
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“I presented it that I’ve never done this before, you’ve never been in this situation as a player,” she recalled. “We’re all in this together. Let’s be mature, let’s be professional about it. Let’s set some small goals and let’s take steps forward. There was so much going on that nobody had time to think about the fact that I was a female even though that was very obvious.”
Wyant was used to breaking new ground. She started in the first-ever NCAA women’s soccer championship game as a standout player at UCF. She was the first goalkeeper to start for the U.S. women’s national team in their first-ever match, in 1985. She recorded the USWNT’s first win and first shutout. So, to become the only female coach in a men’s sport was just another box checked.
Wyant, who led NYU to an 8-8-2 record this season, said she has not faced any barriers in her job that don’t exist for male coaches. She is focused on the players’ academics, finding recruits who can qualify for NYU and other challenges and logistics. In fact, she says doing interviews about her gender may be the only time it comes up as part of her day-to-day duties.
Wyant took on the full-time job after that first season, in which the team went 5-12 under her guidance. The next year, they went 9-8-2. Last season, the team finished 12-4-3, and went to the second round of the Division III NCAA tournament. It was the team’s first appearance in the tournament since 2010.
“When I talk to some of my colleagues who are female coaches in the female game, I say, ‘Hey, you can do it,’” said Wyant, who made 16 career appearances for the USWNT. “There’s no additional barriers to coaching a men’s team. You’re dealing with a player who happens to be a male. Those players have the same characteristics in terms of how you manage them. The game is the game; it’s not changing. The field is the same size, the number of players is the same, the soccer ball is Size 5, men or women. There’s no reason a woman can’t coach a men’s team. It’s not as hard as people think.”
Jill Ellis is still mulling her next move. Wherever she ends up, Ellis will remain focused on a larger, overarching goal: increasing the number of women coaching in the sport, no matter whether their players are women or men.
Ellis said her approach initially was top-down. She has focused on increasing the number of women in leadership roles, such as athletic directors and administrators. She spoke recently at a C-level coaching course that included several current NWSL players. There were only eight or nine candidates, she said — smaller than last year. Now, Ellis said she may also start to explore a bottom-up approach, looking to increase the number of women coaching youth soccer.
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“We have to get a bigger base,” she said. “Part of that is, coaching doesn’t seem to be a profession young girls want to do. When they see parents screaming at their coach, it’s like, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ At the youth level, we need to make it more of a professional culture. Then young women would be saying, ‘Yeah, I want to do that.’ You don’t see parents walking in and screaming at a teacher. But on the fields you see a lack of professionalism, and girls go, ‘Why would I put myself in that situation?’”
Increasing the number of female coaches can be aided by more women coaching in the men’s game, Ellis said. Because both genders coach women’s soccer, there are far more opportunities across the board for men than there are for women. More women coaching on the men’s side — from youth up through the professional levels — would open up opportunities.
Ellis pointed out that there is just one woman employed as a head coach in the NWSL: Sky Blue FC coach Freya Coombe. Former Utah Royals coach, Laura Harvey, now the U.S. women’s under-20 coach, is currently getting the USSF PRO license, joining Ellis as only the second woman to take the course.
“I don’t want it to be normal that there is one female in the pro license,” Ellis said. “But to do that, we’ve got to get more women into coaching.”
The answer lies in opportunity, both in the men’s game and in the women’s. And maybe one club in the men’s game offering an opportunity to a woman can inspire the next generation of female coaches.
“It’s going to require two things,” Ellis said. “Women coaching at the highest level, so they feel prepared for that, and then also leadership or ownership that’s willing to take a risk.”
(Photo: Denny Medley / ISI Photos)