Emma Hayes made an impressive first impression by winning Olympic gold just two months after taking the job, but her real job as head coach of the US women’s national team now begins with this year’s January camp.
Although January camp is a regular fixture on the USWNT calendar, this year’s edition of the week-long training session comes with a unique twist. Hayes named a 26-player roster Tuesday made up of senior team players, but will welcome about 50 players in total by simultaneously holding a futures camp as she begins to plot the roadmap to the 2027 Women’s World Cup and the Games. 2028 Olympics.
“[We’ll] “We have a week of training to really dig into things that we haven’t really had a lot of opportunities to do,” Hayes said at a news conference Tuesday. “I’ve said this many times to people: I’m doing the job backwards, having 75 days [in charge] and an Olympic Games and now I have the opportunity to build the program and develop the playing group.
This camp marks Hayes’ most extensive attempt to explore the USWNT’s large pool of players, and perhaps his last major effort to do so. The head coach said the team’s friendlies in the fall were opportunities to work with less experienced talent, while February’s SheBelieves Cup “will be the first camp where I can confidently say that I have seen the vast majority of the players that I wanted to see. I feel like we’re in a good position to really move on to the next phase,” according to Hayes.
That’s not the only key element of this month’s camp, which runs Jan. 14-21 at Dignity Health Sports Park in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson. Hayes will lay the ground rules for the next three-plus years as she begins to rethink the way the USWNT operates in an increasingly competitive women’s soccer landscape.
One week, two camps
This month’s camp falls outside of a FIFA international window, so Hayes will not be working with any European club players this month and will, to some extent, conduct a preseason camp of sorts. Players will only take part in one session a day and undergo fitness tests which are normal during the first week of pre-season, but that doesn’t mean Hayes will lack opportunities to learn about his players.
Certain absences from the senior national team meant that Hayes had the opportunity to call up six uncapped players on that list, while the future list will likely be made up exclusively of players who have limited experience at senior international level. You will essentially be coaching two teams for a week, giving you a real opportunity to explore a wider group of players.
“The way we’re going to do it… [senior] The national team will train on one field,” Hayes said. “Let’s say we start at 11:30, we finish at 1:00, then the future ones will start, so I’ll go from field to field and train along the field. another tone. [I’ll] give sessions [on] both parties, but I will have the support of many staff of [the youth national teams] as well as WNT. For example, if the WNT has a day off, the futures will be training. “Then I will be teaching some face-to-face sessions at both locations, so I will be extremely busy, probably much busier than any camp.”
The concurrent camps will allow Hayes to introduce senior national team practices to less experienced players, giving them a solid foundation as they seek roster spots for the 2027 World Cup and 2028 Olympics.
“We will train a single training session a day with all training sessions in and around the WNT methodology and our playing principles,” Hayes said. “January camp is, beyond the first week of preseason, an opportunity to deepen the connections, the communication in our style of play and do it in a way where we don’t have a pressured game at the end of the week.”
We present the 2027-28 strategy
Hayes will use her first January camp to present a project she calls the 2027-28 strategy, which will broadly analyze the new practices the USWNT should introduce to be successful in the major tournaments that await them in a few years. She will present the strategy to the senior and youth team staff on Saturday before showing the players at a conference once camp begins, and said she has a big focus on developing young players.
“I think one of those things I would like to see, in the future, is the development of the U-23 program,” Hayes said. “I’ve already alluded to the fact that we have fewer under-23s playing regularly among the top nations than anywhere else, plus the fact that we simply haven’t had the camp program for 23s, 20s and under. the rest of the major nations. Our first goal is to close the gap with that. The second is, can we do it in such a way that we can create maximum exposure?
In his first months in office, Hayes has been a frequent critic of his predecessors’ excessive preference for experienced players, leaving too little room for younger players to earn valuable minutes at the international level and have a true impact on the USWNT. .
“I always feel like we’ve had a bit of a lost generation that maybe hasn’t had some of the exposures that, like I said, some of the major nations have had,” Hayes said. “I’m desperate to find ways to close that gap because we can’t just rely on the domestic game to do it. We have to give international experiences to players… You can’t just expect a player with no caps or “With less than five international matches you will go from being a dominant youth player to a dominant senior team player at the highest level.
Hayes plans to make the simultaneous camps happen annually and hopes to hold them at other times during the year, but mainly hopes that the U-23 and U-20 national teams will serve as a place for players to develop if they are not ready to immediate. to join the larger team.
“When you’re preparing for something in 27, 28 and beyond, you have to create the right situations, one where a group of players can build a way of playing together, but also next to each other, you have to build another group besides that,” he said. “I really hope that the 23 program really plays an integral role in what we are doing in 2027 and 2028.”
Battle to be number 1
With Alyssa Naeher’s international retirement last year, the USNWT is looking for a new first option in goal. Casey Murphy is the most experienced player in January camp, but Hayes is using this month as a final opportunity to explore all of his options.
“Yes, I have seen Jane Campbell, Casey Murphy in great detail and Mandy Haught, but beyond that, I would like to see at least three others who are in a position to say, ‘Okay, where are we in that group of people? six?'” Hayes said.
She will begin setting her preferred options next month, but hopes the battle will be the initial one that lasts the rest of the year.
“[By] SheBelieves, I hope to have narrowed that down to three,” Hayes said. “I want to create opportunities, maybe not always for all three, but maybe for two, to see how they do against different opponents and then try to give them exposure over the next few years, but always keeping the door ajar for the players… It will probably take the rest of this year to figure it out.”
