NEW YORK -- Emma Hayes smiled and laughed as she fielded questions at the head of a long conference table in a corner room three stories above bustling Madison Avenue. She wore a small U.S. Soccer pin on the left side of her light brown blazer as the only visual clue of her new role as U.S. women's national team head coach.
This is the job she had dreamed of earning for more than two decades -- the biggest job in women's soccer. This is the job her late father and best friend, Sid, told her to go after as he lay on his deathbed in September -- the job Hayes discussed with Sid as if she had already obtained it, because she wanted him to leave with that memory.