In the days before arguably the biggest game of Emma Hayes’s managerial career, where her Chelsea side will attempt to overturn a 2-1 Champions League semi-final first-leg defeat against the five-time winners Lyon, she is again waxing lyrical about the resilience of her team. A team that left the Groupama stadium having scored a vital away goal, courtesy of Erin Cuthbert, where “others would have folded” after falling two goals behind within 35 minutes.
Except this time it is different. Her words are weightier, deeper. Because while many would assume all Hayes’s efforts would be focused on the football pitch, instead she got her team to put their resilience into context and looked to give them a deeper understanding of what that word means, by inviting the Holocaust survivor Susan Pollock MBE to Cobham to meet her players.
“We had a 45-minute talk from a beautiful woman, who came in to discuss her experiences post‑primary school age of being taken from her home to a concentration camp, watching her mother being taken away to be murdered in the gas chamber and her father be taken away to be beaten to a pulp, while her brother disappeared,” says Hayes.
“Listening to her experience of being dehumanised and persecuted as part of a people where six million lost their lives, not only was it incredibly traumatic to listen to and emotional, but I asked her one question and I said: ‘How did you keep going, what got you through that?’ And she said to me: ‘I was young and I wanted to give back something to life. I felt hopeful enough to do that and I felt grateful that life is worth living for.’
“She didn’t display any anger – merely thankful that she’d come through probably the worst experience ever, and still had the kindest of hearts. It was a reminder to our entire environment today that your resilience is important, that you’re going to need it in a really, really, really difficult time, and she had it in abundance.
“Ultimately we don’t have to be arseholes to get to where we want to go. We can be good people and we can be humble in that process, and I demand that in our environment. If I feel that anybody gets too big‑headed or takes advantage of it, then I will make it clear, because I want everyone to value everything we have, and everyone involved in it has worked hard, so bloody hard, including the football club, to get us to this point.
“Sunday, for me, is merely a celebration of all that collective work. I want it to be a joyous occasion and one that we celebrate with an unbelievable performance.”
It was Hayes’s idea to bring Pollock in and it is a refreshing move from a manager given the current climate. It would be so easy for Hayes to avoid or ignore the wider debate taking place in the game, and society, on racism and antisemitism, and especially easy to hide behind the football. Instead there is a manager looking beyond the white lines and at the benefits for her squad, both as people and players, of confronting these issues. She did it because she is “so proud of the club’s work that we do to promote rooting out antisemitic behaviour and discrimination in all forms”.
She adds: “I was particularly inspired by the three-minute video the club had collaborated on with the Holocaust Trust and Kick It Out, and I thought it was important the players received some education around the values of life and what people have gone through to be here, and have an appreciation for it. And for me, what we do, we’re extremely privileged. I certainly felt the players benefited immensely from her story today and we just recognise how lucky we all are.”
With that all said, it is hard to look at this particular game of football as more than just that: a game of football. And it is perhaps the contextualising of football that helps the team approach this match bit by bit. “The important part is that we take every little moment at a time,” says Hayes.
“To think about anything other than how we’re going to train tomorrow, how we’re going to perform the next day in preparation for the game, would be foolish.
“We are not delusional. We know Lyon will come at us with everything they’ve got, they’ve got star power, they’ve got money, they’ve got lots of titles behind them, they’ve got lots of confidence in their own ability and they will do everything they can – but this team will throw as much in Lyon’s direction.
“We’re good enough. We’re ready. We’re capable. I’ve always said it would take several years before an English team competes. We’re showing we’re getting closer to that. You have to suffer. You have to show you can cope, be resilient and that we can fight back.
“I’m certain you don’t get to where you want to by simply willing it there, and we’re going to have to work harder than we’ve ever worked. I’m excited to see that and even more excited to see how the crowd will push the team on to produce an even bigger performance.”