At times throughout her first two weeks as U.S. women's national team coach, Emma Hayes felt like "a heart surgeon in the middle of emergency surgery."
"Not because anything is drastically wrong" with the team, she clarified; but her first training camp overloaded her and players with, well, a lot. There were individual meetings and intense classroom sessions. There were "tired brains" and taxing practices. Hayes, within a week of landing in America, leapt into the USWNT cauldron, and tried, all at once, to build relationships and trust, teach "methodology" and "principles," establish expectations and, oh by the way, win a couple soccer games.