Jill Ellis earns job security to make big changes to U.S. women's soccer
One thing we learned about Jill Ellis during the past year is that she operates outside the court of public opinion and has proved to be a confident, knowledgeable, methodical yet democratic coach who depends on process more than gunslinging or knee-jerk reactions.
In other words, just because she's now in charge of the wildly popular and reigning Women's World Cup championship team doesn't mean Ellis will tell Abby Wambach it's time to retire or shuffle the roster just to prove she's in charge.
"Nothing is ever static with this team and its players. Nothing is set. It's again the beginning of another process ... but I'm very much ahead of the curve from where I was a year ago," said the 48-year-old former UCLA head coach and longstanding U.S. Soccer player development director.
The great mystery about whether the U.S. women can finally end 16 years of futility and win its first World Cup since 1999 has been solved. A good deal of the credit goes to Ellis, who was rewarded by U.S. Soccer on Wednesday with a multi-year contract extension for leading the U.S. to the 2015 Women's World Cup title. Ellis will be the eighth head coach of a soccer team that has set the bar for women's soccer around the world.
U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati has decided to keep it a mystery exactly how long Ellis' contract locks her up, but it's safe to assume that Ellis will manage the world's No. 1 women's national soccer team through the 2019 Women's World Cup in France, and probably into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In her prior contract, Ellis earned between $185,000 to $215,000 in base pay, not including bonus clauses. While one can expect she got a raise -- especially after such a big deal has been made about the pay disparity between men's $35 million World Cup payouts and the $2 million dealt to the women's winner -- it's unlikely she's close to U.S. men's national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann's last reported salary of $2.6 million.
Regardless, Ellis said she very excited to get going. She now possesses the kind of job security and long-term view that shifts Ellis from a temporary keeper of the U.S. women's team to a critical force that will help manage, if not shape, a successful national team's role in growing women's soccer in the United States. After a year in which Ellis had to accelerate a roster-tuning process after being named coach in May 2014, her focus on building a 23-player roster that could evolve and adapt to the intense atmosphere and seven game format on artificial turf paid off. Despite an underachieving attack that made a World Cup victory seem frighteningly less than a sure thing, the wisdom of Ellis' management style showed in the knockout rounds, when Ellis shifted to a five-midfielder alignment that pushed veteran Carli Lloyd to an attacking role.
Ellis never panicked, even when it became clear that Wambach, 35, needed to be used as a substitute and that Alex Morgan's comeback stopped short of her being able to finish her scoring attacks. Maybe Ellis and U.S. Soccer should have more proactively installed a youth movement at the attack. Much criticism has been leveled at the U.S. national team powers for not bringing along National Women's Soccer League star Crystal Dunn. But in going with a veteran roster, Ellis was able to manipulate her personnel to deliver wins and the World Cup title.
By the time Lloyd throttled Japan in the final by scoring a hat trick so fast that Wambach literally thought she had died and woke up in World Cup heaven, Ellis' recruitment of midfielder Morgan Brian to the national team alongside stalwart defender Julie Johnston indicated an excellent touch. Months of criticism about Ellis' process by many onlookers was resolved between the U.S. quarterfinal against China, a stirring semifinal win over Germany and the 5-2 shellacking of defending champion Japan.
With all that settled, the head coaching job is now a fundamentally different mission than it has been in years, or ever. Ellis is now officially managing the U.S. women not just for the 2016 Olympics or the 2019 World Cup. She is now the point person for U.S. women's soccer's future.
"I'm delighted to be able to continue with this program. I really enjoyed the last year and winning WC ... and I enjoyed the progression. I'll continue to push for excellence, not just at the Olympics and through future World Cups but to build for beyond my realm to continue to grow the game," Ellis said.
Now, let's see if Ellis makes the call on Wambach's retirement plans, or accelerates a youth movement for the U.S. national team. Maybe job security and a broader, longer view will unleash a more aggressive head coach in Ellis. Or, maybe she'll stick with her process. So far, it has worked.
