Anita Asante: ‘Football needs to adapt to help female coaches’

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.

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