Emma Hayes comes to USWNT as a five-peat WSL champion at Chelsea

Emma Hayes will arrive in America next week, and at her first training camp in charge of the U.S. women’s national team, as a five-time reigning champion of the English Women’s Super League.

Hayes, who was tabbed as the incoming USWNT coach in November, topped off a remarkable 12-year run at Chelsea with a title-clinching 6-0 trouncing of Manchester United on Saturday, the final day of the WSL season.

Chelsea entered the day level on points with Manchester City, and two ahead on goal differential, the first tiebreaker. With City playing simultaneously at Aston Villa, Hayes and Chelsea fans strapped in for what many expected to be a tense two hours.

But in an emphatic first half, the Blues banged in four goals, and effectively buried both Manchester clubs in 45 minutes, to send Hayes off in style.

It had been an emotional week for the 47-year-old Englishwoman. Tears had welled in her eyes and weakened her voice during interviews. She had gifted a set of commemorative, personalized rings to her players. Engraved on the rings were the year she arrived at Chelsea, “2012,” when she took over an underfunded part-time team; and “2024,” the year she’ll leave it as the dominant force in British women’s soccer.

Also engraved prominently on each ring were the words “WHAT GOT US HERE” — a reference to the motto by which Hayes coaches: “What got us here won’t get us there.”

The slogan defined both her perpetual evolution at Chelsea and, now, her task in America.

It rang truer than ever during her final weeks and months in London. Her talismanic striker, Sam Kerr, went down with a torn ACL in January. Kerr’s replacement, Mayra Ramirez, signed for a club-record fee from Levante, also battled injuries throughout the spring, as the WSL title race tightened. And Hayes entered a pivotal final month without her most dynamic playmaker, Lauren James, who was sidelined by a foot injury.

But Hayes and her team adapted. They recovered after losing a May 1 heartbreaker to Liverpool. They won at Tottenham on Wednesday to level up with City atop the table. Hayes then made a massive call ahead of Saturday’s decider: She started Ramirez, who hadn’t played in over a month.

Ramirez rewarded her coach’s faith, bullying Man United defenders, bossing the first half, scoring twice and assisting two others.

Hayes, sporting a track jacket and custom Chelsea shoes, pumped her fists, repeatedly and euphorically, as the goals flew in, one after another.

She gestured toward the thousands of Chelsea fans who’d traveled to Old Trafford in Manchester.

She also managed the game with aplomb.

The entire afternoon was a perfect encapsulation of who she is and what she’s done.

She’s a kind, caring, psychologically astute human; and also a brilliant, pragmatic soccer coach.

“She’s quite the character,” Chelsea and U.S. forward Catarina Macario said last month. “But, yeah, I mean, she’s just a serial winner.”

Saturday’s title was her seventh in the WSL, and last of five in a row. At the final whistle, she embraced her coaching staff, and then, one by one, her players. Captain and defender Millie Bright was the first. Bright teared up as they hugged, and kissed Hayes on the side of the head.

For Hayes, however, there will hardly be time to celebrate. Over the coming days, she will fly across the Atlantic, stop on the U.S. east coast, then travel to Colorado for her first USWNT training camp. She will name her first roster, which will gather May 27, less than two months before the Olympics. She will coach her first U.S. game, a friendly vs. Korea on June 1.

She will step into the USWNT locker room and immediately command respect. She will implement her ideas, and perhaps even disrupt the U.S. Soccer ecosystem.

She didn’t need another trophy to do any of that. But, amid her emotional farewell, she lifted one anyway. That, of course, is what “serial winners” do.