Kelly Cousins: Leading the charge at Utah Royals

“I think there’s something really special being built here.”

Kelly Cousins is leading Utah Royals into a new era. 

Founded in 2017, the team have been relaunched and revitalised in the last few years – and that has included the appointment in summer 2023 of the former Reading manager as their sporting director.

Kelly admits that her role has initially been “pretty much everything - from the operations side to the team management side, working with the coaching staff, player contracts, player signings.”

In the season ahead, she will be focusing more on the sporting side of the role: “work with the team, make sure we’re heading in the right direction, what do they need, but also to drive the culture and to make sure that we’re bringing the right people in the building to keep growing and developing the staff and also to manage upwards as well.

“We have a new president of soccer operations [Jason Kreis], he’s been at the club a long time, but he’s actually now across RSL [Real Salt Lake, the club’s men’s team] and the Royals. So it’s nice now for me to have somebody soccer-minded to speak to and then obviously dealing upwards to ownership as well.”