It was during half-time of an FA Women’s Super League match between Arsenal and Reading that Royals coach Freya Coombe received a call that would caused her to leave the game and make a frantic dash to hospital.
“My mum got taken sick quite suddenly, I remember it well,” she tells The Athletic in the hospitality area of Red Bull Arena. “We were playing Arsenal away in 2014 and I got this call and had to run out and make sure my she was OK. In that moment my world came tumbling down.”
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Mum Margaret would spend a couple of weeks in intensive care having suffered an aortic dissection and would require surgery, thankfully she went on to recover and is fit and well today. Some who suffer the same complication are not so fortunate.
Coombe describes her mum’s scare as a “pivotal moment” as it was after her recovery that she decided that lecturing full-time in Sports Science at Buckinghamshire New University, and coaching part-time as part of the backroom team at Reading, wasn’t where she wanted to be.
Coombe had had the opportunity to work with the likes of Fran Kirby at Reading, an individual she describes as “an unbelievable player,” and it was working with that type of talent and individual quality that challenged and pushed her as a coach. She wanted more of that.
“That experience of putting on challenging training sessions and attending to the individual needs of all the players is huge; someone like Fran had a special talent from a young age, it was clear she needed to be pushed in different ways from the rest of the group,” she says.
“It’s about making sure that people get something out of every training session no matter what their level. Fran always had a ball at her feet and would always be doing extra work, and that is where she was most comfortable, but a lot of these players had success because of how driven they were and how talented they were. We can help their journey by providing an environment, but it comes from them, so while Reading did a brilliant job with Fran, she did a lot of extra work on her own.”
But there was something missing in Coombe’s life, and shortly after her mum’s illness came a call from former Reading player Mikaela Howell, based in the United States, about a job with Everton America in Connecticut. For the first time she seriously started to consider life abroad.
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“I had always been interested in America, always flirted with it,” she says. “Mikaela said there was this job going with Everton America, who run training and soccer camps, and did I fancy it, it was all about timing to be honest.
“I got the job but it was a hard decision whether or not to take it. I had a good job working at the university in England, and working on the coaching side at Reading with some really talented players. To go from that and come over here, get your visas sorted, I was on a short time contract working with young kids at varying levels, and I ended up doing that for four years because I had the faith that I could get the visas and make a go of it.”
Coombe would have to make the adjustment of initially having to rent a room in the home of a family of strangers. She commends her hosts, having spent her first four months in Connecticut with them when it was originally only supposed to be a week. They remain in contact six years on.
Having spent five years in the country, going onto a role with New York Soccer Club as an academy coach and director of scouting, Coombe reached out to National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) club Sky Blue FC, based in New Jersey, last summer to oversee the team as an observer.
Just before Coombe’s arrival, Sky Blue head coach Denise Reddy had been fired following a disastrous spell in charge of the club that saw just one win in 33 matches.
“Again it was an opportunity timing-wise contacting Sky Blue about coming in and gaining exposure to their training environment as an observer,” she says. “It was obviously at a time when they had released a load of their coaching staff and were experiencing some difficulties, but while it was timing, it was also my experiences in the past that allowed me to have that opportunity.”
Goalkeeper coach Hugo Macedo was initially in charge of the club in July and August, but the observer role allowed Coombe to gain an insight into what was working and what needed developing. That experience proved invaluable, and with her past experience of playing and working with Reading, Coombe was announced as interim head coach at the start of September.
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“I sometimes ask myself how I got here,” she confesses. “Every day I am fortunate to be at the training ground at Red Bull and interacting with our coaches, it’s a dream come true. To be in New York City as a foreigner, it’s one of the greatest cities in the world. at the same time it was an opportunity timing wise. I came in as interim, did a good job, the players were happy with the game plans, with the training sessions, so it was a mixture of a lot of things, mixed with the work I did at Reading, working with Jayne Ludlow and Kelly Chambers, so I feel like everything has got me to this point.”
Coombe won one of her five matches in charge as interim boss, which came in Tacoma against OL Reign. Three of the losses in those five fixtures, though, came against the Championship finalists North Carolina Courage and Chicago Red Stars.
But more importantly, the team was competitive and there were signs of things improving on the pitch that mirrored those off it.
Those upturns followed some well-publicised difficulties for the club, with their form on the pitch under Reddy as poor as the running of the club off it, which included players complaining about living conditions and training facilities.
General Manager Alyse LaHue, who had previously worked in the league with the Chicago Red Stars, was officially appointed the day before Coombe was named interim manager. She has transformed the club, which has changed perception and belief, which was rock bottom just a year before.
A fan survey carried out by The Athletic this week found Sky Blue came out on top when answering the question, ‘How confident are you in your club’s ownership and front office?’ LaHue has played a significant role in obtaining that score.
“The club wouldn’t be where they are now without Alyse and (co-owner) Tammy Murphy,” says Coombe. “Alyse is just so experienced having worked at Chicago and having a role outside of soccer in other sports, learning from them. She has come in, turned everything upside down and said ‘this isn’t good enough and this isn’t good enough,’ but she has also listened to the players and the fans and that is where it has made a real difference and is what the club needed.”
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Sky Blue also scored well in the survey when it came to faith in the coaching staff, coming fourth out of the nine clubs, which will give Coombe some confidence having been given the head coach role permanently in December.
The club announced in February that it will now play its home games at Red Bull Arena, home of New York Red Bulls, having previously been based at Yurcak Field at Rutgers University, Piscataway, since the inception of the league in 2013.
So with a new coach, new home and a general manager that has instilled new confidence into fans, Coombe is an English coach that arguably has one of the best jobs in football. But she is also in a minority, as of the nine clubs in the NWSL, she is the only female.
She admits this needs to change.
“It’s nice that we have some presence in the league but there obviously needs to be more,” she says. “I feel honoured to be the one that is doing it at the moment ever since Laura Harvey left (now US Women’s Under-20 head coach). But in terms of pressure, I am just going to do the best job I can regardless of my gender. I can only do what I can do. I am under pressure as a head coach of a professional team anyway, so I have just got to do the best I can.”
To do her best she will rely on her team and Sky Blue has arguably the most talented roster it has had in recent years. US international Malory Pugh has joined the club from the Washington Spirit, while Midge Purce has flown east from Portland, a player who has been on the cusp of the US Women’s National Team for the last 18 months. As well as new players, Coombe will also be able to call on the likes of Carli Lloyd, who continues to set high standards.
So now that she has had the opportunity to spend a portion of time with the club, what is the philosophy she hopes to instil in her side once the league is able to recommence when it is safe to do so?
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“It’s all about creating a positive environment for the players and coaching staff but one where they are accountable for how they act,” says Coombe. “It’s a partnership in terms of the performance, it can’t be put on one or the other and we have to work together and ensure we are setting high standards and making sure they are maintained.
“In terms of my playing philosophy I don’t want to give too much away but certainly for this year I have adjusted in terms of how I have set teams up previously, so we are looking forward to using the talent we have got and I think they fit with how we want to set up. But I think a key thing about this league is the transition and I think the manager and team that can manage transition are the teams that are going to have success.”
(Photo: Brad Smith/ISI Photos/Getty Images).