Women's Soccer Coaching

Part 1 - Amy Rodriguez - A-Rod's New Era All-time US great AMY RODRIGUEZ is taking her first steps into coaching after accepting an offer to return to the college where her storied playing career began. She reveals to STEPH FAIRBAIRN how it all came about... Part 2 - Lou Roberts - Stoking the Fire She lived a dream by captaining her hometown club. Now LOU ROBERTS is on the coaching staff and...

Elite girls’ soccer in Wales has just come to the end of a transformative season – the first in which the Football Association of Wales (FAW) Trust Girls’ Academy u14s and u16s squads competed against boys. When this plan was announced in April 2021, Lowri Roberts - head of women’s and girls’ football at the FAW, and the spearhead behind this new approach - said: “Our aim is simple; to provide mor...

Reflecting on how the female game has changed over the course of her coaching career is no mean feat for Tracey Kevins.  During her near 20-year career in soccer, it has, she says, developed immeasurably into something that would have seemed “too far a reach for the female game” when she started out. Kevins was at the FA between 2005 and 2012, operating as a coach across the U15s, U17s, U19s and U...

Stephanie Savino is counting down the days until May 17, when the first ball is kicked in the new USL W League. A revived and slightly tweaked version of the 1995-2015 iteration of the W-League, the competition is described on its website as “the nation’s pre-professional league, developing the next generation of women’s talent both on and off the field, enhancing the women’s soccer pipeline betwe...

Keri Sanchez comes with a glowing resume – a standout playing career intertwined with, then followed by, a number of high profile, successful coaching roles. Sanchez’s first step into coaching came in 1996 with a call from the former goalkeeper coach of her college team, the North Carolina Tar Heels: Bill Steffen. Steffen was going to restart the University of Oregon’s women’s soccer program, as h...

Each coaching role offers its challenges. Some, however, are more challenging than others. Coach Michele Nagamine currently holds one of those more challenging roles. Since December 2010, she has been head coach of the women’s soccer program at the University of Hawaii. They are one of 11 teams in the Big West Conference – the other 10 are all based in California, six hours’ flight away. That mean...

Katayoun “Kat” Khosrowyar is studying for a Masters degree in global affairs at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The purpose, she tells Women’s Soccer Coaching , is to “put all my skills, abilities and experience under one umbrella”. It would need to be a sizeable umbrella. Growing up in Oklahoma, with Iranian heritage, Kat became an avid soccer player, describing the first time she touched the...

2021 saw FC Barcelona Feminí become the first Spanish club to complete a continental treble – winning the Primera Division, Copa de la Reina and, for the first time, the Uefa Champions League. Women's Soccer Coaching sat down for an exclusive interview with manager, Jonatan Giraldez.

Growing up in Dublin in the 1980s, Lisa Fallon had one female soccer role model – Gabriella Benson. A woman working in a male-dominated environment, Benson oversaw a professional men’s team – unprecedented at that time. There was one problem. Benson was fictional – the lead character in UK television series The Manageress . It still had an impact on the teenage Fallon, watching back home in Irelan...

 Heather Dyche says the question she gets asked most is: ‘What advice would you give coaches looking to carve their own career path in soccer?’.  You need only look at Dyche’s packed Twitter bio to work out why. She is head coach of the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) women’s team, on the technical staff of New Mexico United, a FIFA technical expert, the only female coach on Concacaf’s education...

 Yolanda Thomas - head coach of Tulsa Soccer Club and director of coaching for its girls program - has spotted a trend that needs addressing.  “We all know we need more women coaching,” she notes. “But if we’re going to have more women coaching, inevitably we’re going to end up with more mothers. “If we want these women to keep coaching, how can we support them?” Part of the solution is the Moms W...

 As a player, Denise Schilte-Brown set college scoring records on her way to playing professionally in Germany and representing her native Canada. And in almost 25 years as a coach, she has mentored some top strikers, including current Canada breakthrough star Evelyne Viens. It is fair to say Schilte-Brown knows where the net is - and knows how to bring that out in others 

 Ex-Canada star CARMELINA MOSCATO is back in coaching again after a nomadic post-retirement life. STEPH FAIRBAIRN caught up with her to discuss her philosophy and how coaches can seize control of their career 

As a World-Cup winning goalkeeper, successful youth coach and head coach of the US Deaf Women’s Team, AMY GRIFFIN knows how to get her message across. She explains her methods to STEPH FAIRBAIRN

Gemma Donnelly has been on one hell of a journey. And she knows precisely when it first turned in her favour. It wasn’t in 2019, when the Blackburn Rovers team she leads were finally granted promotion to the FA Women’s Championship – the second tier of English football – after three successive seasons dominating the division below. It wasn’t even in 2014, when her side narrowly avoided relegation...

On February 2nd, 2020, Rebecca May’s brief substitute appearance in a Women’s Super League game at Reading made Manchester United history. The 18-year-old’s five-minute cameo saw her become the first player to graduate through United’s entire youth system, from under-10s, to the fledgling first team. It was a proud moment for all who knew the teenager - not least Charlotte Healy, the coach in char...