Who Cares for the Coaches? Rehanne Skinner’s Call for Change and What Needs to Happen Next
Introduction: The Hidden Toll of Leadership in Football
Rehanne Skinner’s recent interview on the mental health of Women’s Super League (WSL) managers shines a light on a crucial but neglected truth: the people leading teams are often struggling in silence.
Behind every touchline decision lies pressure, insecurity, and isolation. Managers are expected to inspire confidence while juggling multiple roles - coach, mentor, strategist, recruiter, and therapist, all under constant scrutiny and short-term contracts.
It’s a professional environment that champions resilience but rarely provides the support to sustain it. And as Skinner’s experience shows, the cost is not just professional burnout, it’s personal too.
1. Create a Mental Health Framework for Coaches
Football’s wellbeing infrastructure has rightly focused on players, but coaches remain overlooked. Their mental health support is often “reactionary,” as Skinner describes, help arrives only when the damage is already done.
What’s needed:
A Coach Mental Health Framework jointly funded by the FA, WSL, and LMA, mirroring the player-care model.
Independent, confidential counselling and wellbeing services available to all professional coaches, outside club hierarchies.
A national network of sports psychotherapists and wellbeing professionals trained specifically in coaching pressures.
This ensures support becomes proactive, not crisis-led. Helping coaches manage stress before it becomes unmanageable.
2. Make Supervision and Mentorship Standard Practice
Every counsellor, therapist, and clinical leader operates under supervision, a space for reflection, ethical support, and growth. Yet in football, coaches rarely have this.
What’s needed:
Regular clinical supervision or leadership mentoring for all managers, funded by clubs or the league.
A Coach Supervision Programme pairing ex-managers, psychologists, and wellbeing coaches with current leaders.
Integration of reflective practice into professional development, not as an optional add-on but as a standard.
Supervision protects both the coach and the club, reducing burnout, improving performance, and fostering emotional intelligence in leadership.
3. Secure Fairer Contracts and Work Conditions
Skinner highlights how short-term contracts and relocation pressures intensify stress. Managers may move across the country, live apart from families, and take on high-risk roles for minimal security.
What’s needed:
Minimum contract standards with a certain amount of years, and relocation support.
Security is not a luxury, it’s a foundation for healthy performance.
4. Build a Culture Where Mental Health = Performance
Football’s culture still frames emotional honesty as weakness. Skinner is right: until mental wellbeing is seen as part of performance, it will remain marginalised.
What’s needed:
Embed mental health education into FA coaching badges and leadership training.
Include wellbeing metrics in club evaluations (e.g. retention, burnout rates, staff satisfaction).
When coaches are emotionally regulated, their teams perform better. Mental health isn’t the opposite of performance, it’s the engine behind it.
5. Resource Clubs Properly — No More One-Person Systems
Many women’s clubs lack the senior staff that men’s teams take for granted. The result? Managers become overloaded, managing recruitment, welfare, and logistics alongside coaching.
What’s needed:
Minimum staffing standards across all WSL clubs, assistant coaches, analysts, wellbeing officers, player-care roles.
FA oversight ensuring clubs meet those standards before entering top-flight competition.
Shared support models for smaller clubs, allowing cost-effective access to analysts, sports psychologists, and wellbeing teams.
When one person is doing five jobs, burnout isn’t a possibility, it’s inevitable. Proper structure protects people and improves performance.
Conclusion: Protecting the Protectors
Rehanne Skinner’s honesty is more than personal reflection, it’s leadership in action. She’s speaking for a generation of coaches who love the game but are being drained by it.
The women’s game has evolved rapidly, but emotional and organisational infrastructures haven’t kept pace. If football truly values wellbeing, it must extend that care to everyone on the pitch. Including those on the sidelines.
Investing in the mental health of coaches is not charity; it’s strategy. Because when leaders thrive, teams flourish, and the whole game rises with them.
About the Author
Kevin George is a clinical therapist, mental health consultant, and former professional footballer. He delivers wellbeing and leadership training across education, sport, and corporate sectors. Kevin is also a published writer and speaker on emotional intelligence, behaviour, and systemic wellbeing in performance environments.
