Hope Returns (Hope Powell interview)

Almost twenty years after taking the England job as a club captain with no managerial experience, Hope Powell surprises the game again by taking her first club post, at WSL 2 Brighton. She says the decision was not easy – she loved coach education and the PFA role – but she missed working with players, Brighton felt like a good fit, and after fifteen years in the England job she had needed the time away to restock. She is candid that day-to-day club management, contracts and agents are new to her and that she trusts assistant Amy Merricks, and equally clear she has no intention of bringing people in at anyone else’s expense. What appealed was a club whose women share facilities with the men, and an identity worth building on.