It's going to be weird when the national anthem plays, but I'm so proud to lead the United States

Emma Hayes closed the book on 12 trophy-laden years at Chelsea with her fifth consecutive Women’s Super League title in May.

- DOM SMITH

She had taken the helm in 2012 and turned the Blues into a winning machine, lifting 16 pieces of silverware along the way. At the season’s end Hayes left for the biggest role in the women’s game — agreeing to become head coach of the US national team.

Since May, English football has been deprived of a true groundbreaker and one of its most captivating figures. This week, Hayes returns as her US team takes on the Lionesses in front of 82,000 at Wembley on Saturday. It’s a clash of the teams ranked numbers one and two in the world — the European champions against her Olympic champions — as well as a collision between Hayes’s previous life and her new adventure.

Settling in Stateside

Asked how her life has changed in the six months since she swapped Cobham for Atlanta, Georgia — upping sticks with her six-year-old son Harry — Hayes does not miss a beat: “The weather is nicer! I’ve seen more sun in the last six months than I have done in a long time.” The “sheer size” of the United States has taken some getting used to, as well. “Travelling from Portland to New York to Florida, you feel like you’re crossing continents,” she says. “ It has just felt refreshing and exciting.”

Back in Camden, where she grew up “an innercity London kid” and which she descibes as the “greatest place on earth”, Hayes spoke to journalists this week at the Underworld music venue underneath the World’s End pub, where she used to watch indie bands play. She said she had got her “mojo, smile and joy back” in the United States and admitted that she “actually felt quite unwell at the end of my time at Chelsea”. Away from the daily grind of club football, which meant being at the training ground six or seven days a week, she has been able to strike a healthier work-life balance, in which she can take Harry to school and get to the gym.