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Lydia Bedford: 'Enjoy the chaos'
After roles with the England youth teams, Arsenal, Leicester and Brentford men’s U18s, Lydia Bedford’s next challenge is starting from scratch with Calgary Wild. She tells Carrie Dunn it’s a big job – but one she relishes...
Lydia Bedford is used to making headlines.
She has worked with England’s women’s national youth teams, across the age groups, including going to the U17s World Cup and the U19s Euros.
Bedford has also been head coach of Leicester City in the Women’s Super League.
Most famously, in 2023, she was named as head coach for Premier League Brentford’s men’s U18s, making her the first woman to hold that role.
She had connections at the club, having taken her Uefa Pro Licence alongside two of Brentford’s first-team coaches, Kevin O’Connor and Justin Cochrane (the latter now also a part of the England men’s national-team coaching staff).
In another link, Bedford had played with O’Connor’s sister in her younger days.
When she left Leicester, Bedford was looking for new opportunities – and remembered a visit she had to the Bees some years back.
“I remember being allowed just to shadow Kev for the whole day,” she told WSC.
“I sat in one of [manager] Thomas [Frank]’s analysis meetings with the players, I was serving balls on the pitch – [I thought] ‘This is quite fun!’.
“Then in January 2023, [O’Connor] said, ‘There’s this job coming up. I think you’d be perfect for it. You’re going to need to apply but I think you should’.
“I don’t actually tell this to many people, but initially I was like, ‘I’m not really sure what I want at this moment. I don’t have a massive desire to go and work in the men’s game.’
“Most people who know me know that I’m not really a men’s football fan. I never have been. I just love women’s football.”
Given time to consider it, though, she decided she had been too hasty, and began the application process.
At the same time, she was offered the short-term job of assistant coach with Arsenal Women, working alongside Jonas Eidevall, and accepted that (“as you would,” she points out).
Knowing that her time with the Gunners was only guaranteed until May, she went into the interview process with Brentford, and found that even the way they recruited their staff was something she loved.
“The interview processes were really two-way. They put you in a room and rotated people around.
“My first two [interviewers] were two boys from the academy, who were in the B team.
“I remember them saying to me, ‘This is as much about you recognising if this is where you want to work as it is about us getting to know you, so just relax. These are just conversations.’”
When Brentford offered her the job, she understood the significance of taking a coaching role in men’s football.
“I knew how big a deal it was for women in football; so, when they offered it to me, I didn’t take long to think about it, because I felt a bit of a moral responsibility that I should give this a go.
“I’ve always wanted to be a head coach, so, while I really enjoyed assisting Jonas, and it was a great environment to work in, I also knew that if I sat doing that role for too long, maybe I wouldn’t get looked at as a head coach.
“I took the gamble and I didn’t expect that there would be half as much attention [as there was].
“But I guess that’s just my mentality in football. You can go about your business and people will have an opinion on it, but it did blow up a little bit!”
Bedford adapted her coaching philosophy in her new role, moving from the results-driven world of senior football to the more holistic development of youth players.
“It was much more about ‘How do we develop the next player that’s going to progress through the pathway?’, similar to when I was at the FA with the young Lionesses teams.
“The focus wasn’t necessarily on the team winning, it was on individual development.”
This meant considering how to give everyone game time, and managing players’ expectations. It also meant an entirely new set of in-game decisions.
She gives a real-life example of this: “We were 5-0 up, and had a first-year on the bench, who needed an opportunity to play and was trying to find his way in the group.
“We put him on, and suddenly it’s 5-2 – and could have been more, to be honest, the way [opponents] QPR quickly turned on that side of the pitch to exploit that opportunity.
My goalkeeping coach is saying to me, ‘Move him up front and put someone back there so that we can win the game!’
“I’m like, ‘No,’ because he’s got to learn. He’s got to go through it.”
Youth players also need to learn how to behave in a professional football environment, and that was part of Lydia’s job at Brentford.
“Take reactions to selection,” she said. “You’re trying to help them understand what would be the right reaction in the future.
“There were many times I had to say to them, ‘Look, if I was actually your first-team manager right now, you probably don’t play again this season’.
“I’ve had a player where, we’ve named the team, and before [they’ve] even left the classroom, and players are still walking out and fist-bumping me, he’s like, ‘Why am I not starting?’.
“I’m like, ‘Okay, we really need to talk about that because that is not going to get you very far if you do that in a senior environment. If we send you on loan, that’s not going to fly,’ so you really do have to be very patient and help them.”
In general, Lydia took a slightly different approach to coaching the boys.
“They’re just a different proposition, which is quite eye-opening at times, but they were really fun to work with.
“The boys take things far less personally [than women], so you can be more direct with them. If someone kicks someone on the pitch, they’ll have a little to-do, and then they will be best buddies again.
“I think in women’s sport, we tend to harbour things a little bit more.”
Her next challenge is across the Atlantic, as head coach for Calgary Wild in the brand-new Northern Super League, which kicks off on April 16.
Calgary will be joined by teams from Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Halifax.
It was an opportunity that she was not necessarily seeking; she was happy at Brentford and also relished her additional responsibilities working with England U17s.
“I’ve always been of the mindset of ‘have every conversation and just see how it feels’,” Bedford said.
“The door might shut quite quickly, or maybe it will take your interest more than you thought it might.”
She had a call with the Calgary hierarchy, which left her, as she puts it, “blown away by the people that were running this project and their passion for what they were trying to build over here.
Bedford adds: “It didn’t take long, really, for my brain to start thinking that this could be a really great opportunity for me to come and coach in a different environment – and, actually, I may be the perfect fit for where they are in their journey.”
Since accepting the role, she has been working with sporting director Alex Bruch and CEO Lara Murphy to begin to shape the club, based at the 35,000-capacity McMahon Stadium.
“Everyone working at this club has got such brilliant intentions, and we have so many people that are just helping out across so many different domains,” she says.
“It’s going to be chaotic, so just enjoy the chaos and try not to lose sleep overthinking too much!
“It’s certainly been a lot. From those first conversations, I knew what I was stepping into.
“But, at the same time, when you really think about the reality of building a squad from scratch in a short period of time, that in itself is a big job for any group of people to do, let alone then organising training facilities and everything else.
“It’s a lot, but it’s fun and everyone’s trying to do it with a smile on their face.
“We’re just hoping we can do the best job we can and build good relationships with the players.”
Related Files
How inspiration from a teacher gave Lydia her motivation
Lydia knows that being Calgary Wild’s head coach will present her with new pastoral challenges, as many of her players are moving countries to sign for the club.
Her experience working with Brentford’s male U18s, as well as the England Young Lionesses, will doubtless be helpful here – but so will another of her previous roles.
It was during her time studying for a degree at Brunel University in London that she began to play competitive football – but she had gone there to train as a PE teacher, inspired by one of her own teachers, Miss Lee.
“[She] really did get me as an individual and gave me the greatest experience of PE at school.
“It made me think: ‘I need to give this back, I want to be able to do what you’ve done for me with other young people.’
“The reason I got into teaching was because of the holistic support I got from teachers and youth workers growing up, the way they really took time to understand me as an individual, and supported me way beyond just what it was they wanted to teach me or me to develop. I think that’s something that’s always been a part of me.
“It’s probably something that Brentford maybe sought out in me going into that role, too – not just as a female, but as someone who has that teaching experience, to almost nurture.
“I think that probably was quite a nice fit for them.”
’You shouldn’t be changing too much - be yourself’: Lydia’s advice to female coaches entering the men’s soccer world
Lydia’s advice to another woman wanting to coach in the men’s game would be exactly the same as she would give to anyone wanting to follow their dreams.
“You have to authentically be yourself,” she said. “You shouldn’t be changing too much just because you’re moving into a men’s environment.
“The reason you’re employed is the skillset you’ve got, so bring that skillset to life, and then adapt and evolve once you’re in the environment.
“Because you’ve been employed to go in and do that role, you have to take confidence [from] that.
“You’ve got to be prepared that you are going to be looked at as different, because you are different, and you’ve got to be okay with that.
“You won’t last very long if you’re not enjoying it and you’re not trying to be who you actually are.
“It’s different – embrace those differences and get as much as you can from it.”
Carrie Dunn
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