‘Was there a moment that I knew we were going to win gold? Probably the toe save,” says Emma Hayes, after a pause to think. “After the toe save I was like: ‘Oh, your name’s on it. Your name’s on it.’”

That “toe save” came in the 119th minute of the United States’ Olympic semi-final against Germany, the goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher leaping and flicking away Laura Freigang’s point-blank header to preserve their lead. Four days later, Mallory Swanson’s 57th-minute strike earned the US gold against Brazil, just 73 days after Hayes oversaw her first training session.

There was pain in victory, with Hayes kissing the American eagle necklace of her late father, Sid, but the short journey from taking charge to the final was joyful after “the hardest year of my 12 years [at Chelsea]”, she says.

Sitting on a sofa in the back room of a studio in Brick Lane, London, where she is promoting her book on leadership, A Completely Different Game, written with the author Michael Calvin, the weariness that emanated from Hayes during that final season at Chelsea seems to flow back into her face when she talks about it.

The announcement of her appointment as the US head coach was rushed out in November, with the news about to break. From then on, she was juggling.

“Maybe I didn’t realise how tough that would be,” she says. “I’m just a really loyal person, so I didn’t want to walk out halfway through. I just didn’t want to put the club and the girls in that position, even if it was in my best interest to do it.

“From that day onwards it was really, really challenging because for the first time in a long time it had brought uncertainty into a place that didn’t have it … I thought it was unbelievable to win a title with that backdrop.

“It was difficult because I never wanted anybody to accuse me of cutting corners and not doing everything I could for Chelsea. If anything, I overworked and that just ran me into the ground. I also think I did that because I was just grieving so hard.”

Sid died in September, after being diagnosed with lung cancer, and had told Hayes that if she was offered the US job she had to take it. Sid had championed her career and his loss was felt in her professional world as much as her personal one. Sitting in the dugout at Chelsea was now traumatic and it became inconceivable in the long term without Sid in his usual spot in the stands. “I just felt like I couldn’t do it any more – I couldn’t breathe,” she says.

Her weariness was also a cumulation of years of personal traumas, from the birth of her son and the loss of his twin before that, to her emergency hysterectomy after a long battle with endometriosis.

“For the last three years my endo had gotten really bad,” she says. “I then had a hysterectomy and the part you don’t talk about is the sudden menopause. Learning to live with the sudden menopause was really hard. Getting my oestrogen levels right, and my physical and emotional wellbeing right, took me a while. Just when I got it there, my dad was diagnosed and he died.

“Within 10 days or so of his funeral, or even less than that, I’m being offered the job I dreamed of getting. I don’t think I’ve given myself time to grieve at all. I don’t know what that looks like – I’ve spoken to my sisters about this. It comes in little snippets for me, but I was so down for a long period. I was having to do a job where you’re in the public eye, you’re under scrutiny, you’re the spokesperson for the sport, you’re running a team and a club that expects to win. I found that really, really hard to live with.”

The US were supportive of Hayes’s decision to see out her time at Chelsea. To do both jobs, Hayes would finish work, spend time with her son, Harry, and then, when he was in bed, switch her mind to the US. How much sleep was she getting in those months? “Oh, not enough, not nearly enough,” she says. “But I knew that if I wanted to hit the ground running, I had to put in place some things in the background. I was never going to do it on my Chelsea clock, and I was never going to do it before Harry went to bed.

“What I found really, really hard was I was literally doing everything I possibly could to try to bring Chelsea to another title. But it just felt like a slog. And I just couldn’t make it go any better.”

Once the season ended, a 6-0 win at Old Trafford securing the WSL title, Hayes wanted to deliver for the US. “I felt so supported right from the off. But I also felt obligated because they’d waited for me. So I wanted to give them the best version of me. I was exhausted and I had to find the energy. I remember Matt Crocker [US Soccer technical director] saying to me: ‘Emma, you won’t realise how much a change will give you energy.’ It did. I was expecting to feel that end-of-season slump, and I didn’t. I’ve got energy again. I’ve got excitement again. I’ve got a chance to build something again.”

There was no fear about the transition. “I’m always very much about making the most of the time you’ve got. Be concise. Think of different ways to deliver your information. If you teach things well enough, you can implement it. And, of course, you need to have the right players at the right moment and all of those things. When you’re with a club team, sometimes players down tools … At international, what I learned was they know they’re not here a lot, so they make every day count.”

The gaps in between camps and competitions present an unknown but are “brilliant”, says Hayes. “I can get Emma’s brain back. The menopause fog has gotten easier. I have my oestrogen and my hormonal stuff in a better place. I can start to strategise for 2027. You don’t get the chance to do that at club level, the quality work in between. Putting a 2027 strategy together is exciting. Thinking about how to implement the game model through our youth is exciting. I’ve got time to do it. Often you don’t get the time to implement things, and I’m a builder.”

The immediate task of winning Olympic gold was huge, though. “I had a look at the expected goals model in the last 12 months. I looked at the chance creations in the last 12 months. The US were miles off in comparison to the top five teams in the Olympics. The gap between Spain and the US was like that [she holds her hands wide]. So, I was like: ‘I need to close this gap.’” What did the team need most? “Structure, organisation, a plan.”

If leaving out Alex Morgan and other veterans was tough, so was dealing with the fallout from the midfielder Korbin Albert interacting positively with homophobic social media posts, including one targeting Megan Rapinoe, that were picked up on by players, fans and the media before Hayes’s arrival.

“Especially in America, the political and religious divide means that there’s always going to be very different opinions in the locker room,” Hayes says, “but the core of it must be an appreciation and understanding that where that difference exists, we’re respectful of each other and we understand what our responsibilities are when we put the shirt on. I totally respect that, quite rightly, a lot of people were upset, but I couldn’t provide all the answers they were perhaps looking for when I’d walked into something that was relatively unfamiliar to me.”

A part of connecting with players and introducing ideas is her use of stories – be it discussing pain barriers at the Olympics by telling the team about the conditions of the ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter or handing out books she thinks will chime.

Does she remember stuff she’s read and draw on it or seek out stories to fit messages? “Both. One year when I gave all the girls a copy of Siddhartha I just thought: ‘Oh, this is so perfect, for so many of them in so many ways, when they’re contemplating their paths, whatever that might look like.’ I know the profound impact that might have had on me at a similar juncture. Of course, for some it will resonate, for some it won’t, but I know they want to develop their leadership.

“I might reflect on things that might have come my way or I’ll ask mentors what they think would be good for a certain player.”

Enriching herself beyond football is important. Hayes studied intelligence and international affairs at university with the ambition of becoming a spy. “I can’t help it,” she says, of staying culturally alive. “It changed for a while, from reading. I’d become a big podcast listener. I still am. What has happened now is I’ve found myself going back to politics, which has been really great. I don’t know whether it was triggered by wanting to understand more in and around current American politics. I’ve studied so much post-1945 politics and economics and I feel like I’ve been able to go back to reading things I’ve really, really enjoyed, like going back to reading the Economist.”

• This article was amended on 6 September 2024 to replace the main image.