Former defender Anita Asante made 71 appearances for England during a 19-year career and won the quadruple with Arsenal in 2007. She also played for Chelsea and Aston Villa, as well as several clubs across Europe and the United States. Since retiring in 2022, she has coached in the women’s game. This season, she will be contributing columns for BBC Sport.
It was interesting to hear Wales boss Craig Bellamy highlighting the energy and levels of responsibility it takes to be a coach. This is something that I’ve experienced as well.
Club football is exciting to be involved in as a coach. You can really grow and shape something unique. But the investment and energy that goes into it season upon season is incredible. I really understand why some coaches pause and press the reset button.
It’s worth it when you get the outcome you want or you see that natural progression. All the dedicated hours that the coaching staff have put in, feels worth it.
But what is sustainable for coaches?
It’s getting tougher each season for clubs in the Women’s Super League (WSL) to keep up with the growth of the game. You need extra backroom staff now to support players. If the club is under-resourced, then a lot of the responsibility falls on head coaches and managers in the women’s game.
There is a cost to success in coaching. It’s the energy it takes to achieve it and the sacrifices you make. There’s rewards at the same time – but there is stress and pressure involved as a coach.
The women’s game is growing in every element. We need to make sure that we don’t forget the coaches and give them the best support and resources possible to put out the best product possible.
‘We need infrastructure to catch up’
Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp was one of the most outspoken in the Premier League to admit it takes a lot of energy to do what he did, which was really productive.
Liverpool were heavily resourced with financial backing, good facilities, specialist set-piece coaches, medical staff and others who could cater to the many needs of the club. It was still taxing for him though. It’s a big commitment with the analysis, the planning and all the preparation that goes into delivering performances as a coach.
If you look at Emma Hayes in the women’s game, who has spoken about the same energy it took to achieve what she did at Chelsea, the difference is that she had to build something from the ground up. That’s everything from pushing for the women to be training on better pitches at Cobham, to having their own building, their own catering on matchdays and driving every single angle of professionalism for the club to gain the success it has had.
It took years to get there. In the end, she was very well supported by the club and would have been in a different position to some other managers in the same league, who are now at the place she was 12 years ago.
It’s changing in the WSL. Now, women’s teams are integrating into clubs where the space wasn’t created with them in mind initially. That fundamentally means a lot of changes have had to happen quickly to integrate them. Marketing, broadcasting and everything on the outside has grown exponentially – which is fantastic – but now we need infrastructure to catch up.
We keep saying we want more female coaches and managers in the game but the wider question I would ask is: does the culture of football create the working environment that is conducive to the needs of female coaches?
It’s been great to see more players bringing children into training grounds, for example, and normalising having working mums in football. That is a really positive step.
My ex-Aston Villa manager Carla Ward has spoken about the challenges of being a mum in coaching. How can football create the space to allow that to exist in a really natural way that supports all staff? That is the key question.
‘You don’t want coaches struggling’
I have been really lucky to have coached in good environments. I went to Bristol City with Lauren Smith and had other female staff there so we were able to shape the culture a little bit and understand the needs for flexibility.
I didn’t realise the intensity of the level of thinking and detail that goes into every aspect of coaching when I transitioned from being a player. You don’t always factor in things like organising meeting rooms, the daily changes to player availability and having to adapt your training plans.
When I work with the England under-23s, it is a really open space to communicate what we need. We do certain things to support our mental wellbeing and needs.
For example, we factor in time for staff to go outside for walks and we have stretching sessions throughout the day. We try little things to make sure we all get the best out of ourselves. We are trying to evolve and do what we can in a football environment that has always existed in a certain way.
It’s important to have these discussions because you never know how much you can influence your club or the environment. Unless people speak up about certain things like this, you won’t necessarily know what their challenges are.
You don’t want coaches struggling or feeling guilty about that balance. The beauty of women’s football is that it’s still an infrastructure that is developing and we still have room to make it whatever we want it to be.
Coaches want the same things as fans and players but they need to be invested in as well. We need to adapt to the evolving landscape which is including more women in football generally. We can’t stay still. We can’t be satisfied with where we’re at. We need to keep evolving.
Anita Asante was speaking to BBC Sport’s women’s football news reporter Emma Sanders.
