A
t the annual LMA dinner
this week Emma Hayes
was engrossed in
conversation with Sir Alex
Ferguson. She went on
stage to present an award to
Jürgen Klopp, and received one of her
own.
Among the country’s leading
coaches and managers, she was being
treated as a colleague, an equal. And,
some day hopefully in the near future,
the rest of the football world will
catch up.
At some stage, Hayes will manage a
professional men’s football team —
but why wait? The question I have
been asking, staring at the list of
names being touted as the
next manager of Queens Park
Rangers, is why not right here, right
now?
If Sol Campbell can be interviewed
for the vacancy, why on earth not
Hayes? Michael Beale has been
approached for talks, which would be
an intriguing punt on the Aston Villa
coach, but if the club are going to be
imaginative, why not also ask Hayes
what she has to offer?
I write this knowing that
accusations of virtue-signalling and
wokery will already be forming a
disorderly queue in the feedback
comments. But anyone who thinks
that the future of the men’s game
does not include female managers
needs to emerge from the cave and
Sport
QPR want new
manager, so why
can’t it be Hayes?
Matt Dickinson
Senior Sports
Writerjust look around at a changing sport,
a changing world.
The idea that 50 per cent of the
population are forever excluded from
managing a men’s team makes as
much sense as that old trope that
women do not know the offside rule.
In fact, three of the 36 referees
selected for the Qatar World Cup
later this year are women — another
first — and it will be good to have
some fresh eyes on the sport. It is not
as if anyone thinks men have done an
awesome job of officiating all these
decades.
Not to have had one female
manager in 134 years of league
football would, in any other walk of
life — the police, big business, the
armed forces, government — rightly
be called a disgrace. Why do we
maintain this blind spot in football?
Why is it not challenged more?
Ah, you say, but it is men’s football
and the women’s game is very
different — a point that no one
deems relevant when male coaches
make the switch the other way. Or is
this just a one-way street with a
permanent no-entry sign for female
coaches?
Women such as Hayes will not be
taken seriously, and will struggle for
credibility? Someone — quite a few
people — must have said that about
every female trailblazer in history.
Margaret Thatcher, for instance. But
maybe you think that a woman can
run the country but not a dressing
room?
It is mad and self-defeating because
I cannot think of an industry or
workplace that is not enhanced by a
mix of outlooks, including gender
balance. Is football steadfastly going
to see itself as a binary world of its
own?As my colleague Matthew Syed
once noted on these pages: “Please
don’t claim that women, a rather
varied demographic, are congenitally
incapable of understanding football.
Of offering leadership. Of bringing
qualities to football management.”
But, still, many do.
Thankfully, not fellow season-ticket
holders at QPR when I asked if they
would put Hayes, 45, on their
shortlist. The reaction was of interest
and intrigue about a coach who has
just won a fourth domestic double in
a decade at Chelsea, coaching some of
the best players in the women’s game.
Many have enjoyed her insightful
punditry which, having ghosted
columns for Hayes in The Times, I
can vouch is backed up by a sharp eye
for detail, diligence and especially an
innate ability to communicate — to
“get” people — which Ferguson and
Klopp will have enjoyed.
There are those in the women’s
game who feel the flurries of
speculation about her next move, and
whether it should be to a lower-league club in men’s football, diminish
and undermine their own sport which
has to work so hard to keep growing,
even in a summer like this of a home
European Championship.
“When people question what’s next
for Emma Hayes — ‘She has to go
into the men’s game’ — here’s a
manager that doesn’t have to prove
anything,” Alex Scott, the former
England international, said on the
BBC last week. Scott talked about
how “we need to keep her in
the game”, meaning women’s
football.
But it is some measure of progress,
and a healthy normalising of the idea,
to know that Hayes has been
approached by intermediaries on
behalf of Crawley Town, even if Sky
Bet League Two probably seems too
much of a step down.
As Hayes said when linked with a
vacancy at AFC Wimbledon last year,
seeking to defend women’s football, it
would not be easy to walk away from
working with elite, world-class
athletes at Chelsea and chasing an
elusive Champions League trophy to
move into the lower leagues.
But offers will come, including one
from a men’s team in the United States
not so long ago, until hopefully the
right one emerges — which is why I
could not help wondering about QPR,
a team that, incidentally, Hayes did
spend a bit of time watching as a
child. She has been chucked on the
odds list almost as an afterthought at
40-1.
A gamble? Of course appointing
her would be, but then so is Beale,
even if he has a bright reputation and
an interesting CV as a man who has
coached in Brazil at São Paulo as well
as with younger teams at Chelsea and
Liverpool. Beale is regarded as one of
Steven Gerrard’s best recruits as a
manager; assisting the former
England international at Rangers and
Aston Villa.
To consider him shows that the
club are not just rounding up the
usual suspects — Gareth Ainsworth,
etc — when it comes to finding a
replacement after the unnecessary
ousting of Mark Warburton by Les
Ferdinand, the director of football.
But not to consider or speak to
Hayes? Perhaps they might have
learnt something different, a fresh
perspective. We could say that for the
whole men’s game — and for how
much longer?Hayes, right, steered Chelsea to the
league and cup double this season‘Data proves
trans cyclists
don’t benefit’
Cycling
John WesterbyThe transgender cyclist who was barred
from competing in the women’s
national championships last month,
says she has data to prove that she does
not have an advantage over other
athletes in female events.
Emily Bridges, 21, a men’s junior
record-holder, began taking hormone
treatments last year and had been
accepted to compete in the national
women’s omnium championships in
Derby against Laura Kenny, the five-
times Olympic champion, after reduc-
ing her testosterone levels below British
Cycling’s threshold of 5 nmol/litre (men
usually have 10 to 35 nmol/L; a woman’s
level is usually 0.5 to 2.4 nmol/L).
However, she was prevented from
competing by the UCI, the global gov-
erning body, which is now reviewing
her case for inclusion in female events.
British Cycling suspended its transgen-
der policy and is conducting its own
review, searching for a solution that
brings “fairness in a way that maintains
the dignity and respect of all athletes”.
Katie Archibald, Kenny’s team-mate,
criticised sporting bodies for letting
down both transgender women and
female athletes, expressing sympathy
for Bridges but stating that transgender
women who had been through male
puberty had a “retained advantage in
strength, stamina and technique”.
In an interview with Diva magazine,
Bridges was asked about those who feel
it is unfair for transgender women to
compete in female sport. “Hormone
replacement therapy has such a mas-
sive effect,” Bridges said. “The aerobic
performance difference is gone after
about four months. There are studies
going on for trans women in sport. I’m
doing one and the performance drop-
off that I’ve seen is massive. I don’t have
any advantage over my competitors
and I’ve got data to back that up.”
In her final men’s race, in February,
while she was having hormone treat-
ment, Bridges won a points race at the
British Universities Championships.the times | Friday May 27 2022 V2 59