A coach with a long history of stepping on eggshells is aiming at her biggest challenge yet. Can she upend old-minded traditions of how soccer coaches teach women and girls?

U.S. women's national team head coach Emma Hayes had only 75 days to build toward an Olympic gold medal. It would typically be considered an impossible task for some, but Hayes and the USWNT achieved what many thought they couldn't.

With the gold-medal win at the Olympics and her whirlwind 2024 behind her, Hayes was able to firm up and present her strategic vision for U.S. Soccer during the team’s January camp. She calls it “The WNT Way,” a plan that builds on technical director Matt Crocker’s vision for the program to grow the sport as a whole in the United States.

Emma Hayes, still in just her first year as head coach of the USWNT, is challenging long-held norms in women's soccer and pushing for a game built around female athletes.

From the sporting side to commercial elements, the U.S. women’s national team coach said, the women’s game will benefit from an approach different than the men’s game.

Hayes has unveiled 'The WNT Way' blueprint for looking at everything through a "female lens." She hopes the effects are transformative on and off the field

I don’t get paid what Jürgen Klopp gets paid for me to take a sabbatical year.” Or even mentioning, “You can’t find a female coach working in the men’s game leading men”—these past statements from Emma Hayes do not necessarily reflect how strong of an advocate she is for the women’s game.