Rachel Lever is women’s youth academy manager at Manchester City, overseeing the under-16s and under-21s. She also lives, and coaches, with endometriosis.It is a debilitating condition, where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes.Some of the key symptoms include severe pain that stops or restricts normal activity, feeling sick, heavy periods and, sometimes, fertility problems. In the UK, it takes, on average, eight years - yes, years - for someone to be diagnosed with endometriosis.Lever describes herself as “fortunate” for being diagnosed after just a couple of years.But it wasn’t good luck that got her the diagnosis. It was advocating for herself at a time when she knew something was really wrong.

In November 2017, Carla Ward joined Sheffield United - then in the fourth tier of the English women’s pyramid - as player assistant manager.She had just left United’s cross-city neighbours Sheffield FC, who were in the second-tier WSL 2. It was the classic case of an experienced head dropping down a couple of divisions to offer the benefit of their experience, both on and off the pitch. But just three months later came Ward’s Sliding Doors moment.United manager Dan O’Hearne stepped down, forcing the 34-year-old Ward into a difficult decision – whether or not to hang up her boots and step into management full-time.“If I didn’t take it at that moment, knowing I probably only had a few months left playing, then I potentially might have lost that opportunity,” she told WSC.What followed in the five years since has been somewhat of a whirlwind - and has resulted in Ward being one of the most respected names in English women’s soccer.

Part 1 - Amy Rodriguez - A-Rod's New EraAll-time US great AMY RODRIGUEZ is taking her first steps into coaching after accepting an offer to return to the college where her storied playing career began. She reveals to STEPH FAIRBAIRN how it all came about...Part 2 - Lou Roberts - Stoking the FireShe lived a dream by captaining her hometown club. Now LOU ROBERTS is on the coaching staff and tells STEPH FAIRBAIRN about her journey...

Elite girls’ soccer in Wales has just come to the end of a transformative season – the first in which the Football Association of Wales (FAW) Trust Girls’ Academy u14s and u16s squads competed against boys.When this plan was announced in April 2021, Lowri Roberts - head of women’s and girls’ football at the FAW, and the spearhead behind this new approach - said: “Our aim is simple; to provide more best-v-best opportunities in training and games for our most talented girls.”She was just as committed to that goal last month, when I caught up with her and colleague Kat Lovett, the girls’ age-group manager at the FAW Trust, who is leading the programme in south Wales.Both refer several times to “developing the next Jess Fishlock”, the first Wales player to earn 100 caps for the national team.And it is this high-end achievement the two organisations have set their sights on.

Reflecting on how the female game has changed over the course of her coaching career is no mean feat for Tracey Kevins. During her near 20-year career in soccer, it has, she says, developed immeasurably into something that would have seemed “too far a reach for the female game” when she started out.Kevins was at the FA between 2005 and 2012, operating as a coach across the U15s, U17s, U19s and U23s age groups. She began working in the US in 2013, first as head coach with LA Strikers FC, then as technical director of LA Blues Soccer Club and Seattle Reign FC.Since 2017, Kevins has been with the US Soccer Federation, starting out as the women’s U17s national team head coach, before stepping up to the U20s role. Alongside the changes in participation and investment, Kevins has also witnessed huge changes in the concept of the player itself. Something which, she says, will only continue to develop.

Stephanie Savino is counting down the days until May 17, when the first ball is kicked in the new USL W League.A revived and slightly tweaked version of the 1995-2015 iteration of the W-League, the competition is described on its website as “the nation’s pre-professional league, developing the next generation of women’s talent both on and off the field, enhancing the women’s soccer pipeline between college and professional soccer”.It seems a perfect fit for Savino, who has spent her life’s work advocating for females to have more space in soccer.She offers WSC what she describes as her “elevator pitch”, of who she is and what she does. 

Keri Sanchez comes with a glowing resume – a standout playing career intertwinedwith, then followed by, a number of high profile, successful coaching roles.Sanchez’s first step into coaching came in 1996 with a call from the former goalkeepercoach of her college team, the North Carolina Tar Heels: Bill Steffen.Steffen was going to restart the University of Oregon’s women’s soccer program, ashead coach, and he invited Sanchez to be his assistant.Having just graduated from the University of North Carolina with a BA in health andphysical education, Sanchez put aside thoughts of potentially training to be a doctor, and followed Steffen to Oregon, where she spent almost seven years.As I caught up with Sanchez, she was looking to hire an assistant of her own, after recently taking on her first NCAA Division I head coach role at Colorado College.

Each coaching role offers its challenges. Some, however, are more challenging than others.Coach Michele Nagamine currently holds one of those more challenging roles. Since December 2010, she has been head coach of the women’s soccer program at the University of Hawaii.They are one of 11 teams in the Big West Conference – the other 10 are all based in California, six hours’ flight away. That means the season is littered with the complexity of air travel, hotels and tailored preparation, on top of the road trips everyone else makes.“We fly over 20,000 miles a season,” Michele told Women’s Soccer Coaching. “Once we get to the place we’re at, we drive another 1,200 on the ground. So I have zero sympathy for people who take one road trip!“But that’s the nature of our business. We know what we have to do when we play for Hawaii and when we coach for Hawaii.“It is a very beautiful place, but a very challenging place to be a coach, just because of our proximity to everybody else.”

Katayoun “Kat” Khosrowyar is studying for a Masters degree in global affairs at Rice University in Houston, Texas.The purpose, she tells Women’s Soccer Coaching, is to “put all my skills, abilities and experience under one umbrella”. It would need to be a sizeable umbrella.Growing up in Oklahoma, with Iranian heritage, Kat became an avid soccer player, describing the first time she touched the ball as “love at first sight”.On a family holiday to Iran in 2005, Kat was spotted playing futsal by Shahrzad Mozafar, coach of the country’s national futsal team.Mozafar asked Kat to be part of the new project she was working on – the first Iranian women’s national soccer team since the 1979 revolution.

2021 saw FC Barcelona Feminí become the first Spanish club to complete a continental treble – winning the Primera Division, Copa de la Reina and, for the first time, the Uefa Champions League.Women's Soccer Coaching sat down for an exclusive interview with manager, Jonatan Giraldez.