What Jane Goodall Taught Me About Coaching
The women’s game is growing faster than ever—and that’s both incredible and... a little unsettling.
Everywhere I look, there’s energy, funding, visibility, and research being pumped into women’s football. We’re talking about female health more openly. We’re designing programs, building apps, investing in new performance metrics. On paper, it looks like we’re doing the right things.
But when you step away from the headlines and into the environments where real development happens—at the grassroots level, in under-resourced clubs—you quickly realize something:
We’re building fast, but we’re not building deep.
We’re investing in the surface of the game—elite performance, branding, data systems—without strengthening the roots. The people on the ground are overwhelmed. Young players are under-supported. Coaches don’t have time or tools to properly develop athletes long-term, and we’re copying systems from the men’s game without asking: does this actually fit our environment?
A Lesson from the Jungle
Recently, I rewatched the National Geographic documentary “Jane,” about Jane Goodall’s early work with chimpanzees in Gombe. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much her story mirrors the challenges we’re facing in women’s sport right now.
Jane didn’t arrive in the jungle with a PhD or a checklist. She arrived with curiosity and presence. While the scientific community of her time treated animals as datapoints, Jane did something revolutionary: she observed without bias. She gave the chimps names. She noticed their personalities. She let herself connect.
This challenged everything science believed at the time. But because she was patient, empathetic, and willing to observe before intervening, Jane discovered things no one else had. She changed how we do science—not by rejecting rigor, but by reimagining it.
And that’s exactly what we need to do in women’s football.
Let’s Talk About Bias and Science
As coaches and practitioners, we often bring our own biases into how we train and support athletes. We assume what works for men must work for women. We rush to apply protocols and plans without taking the time to understand the ecosystem each player exists within—on and off the pitch.
And perhaps more importantly, we often forget to leave space for players to figure things out for themselves.
We tell them what to do, how to feel, what’s right and wrong for their body—before they even get a chance to tune into it on their own.
This isn’t empowerment—it’s instruction. We need to create environments where players can build trust in their own bodies, develop awareness, and learn how to self-regulate. Observation, reflection, and autonomy should be just as valued as training load data.
Science is important. But real performance happens in the messy, changing ecosystem of daily life—not in a controlled environment.
It's Not About the Best Program—It’s About the Right Environment
I’ve worked in high-performance setups with access to all the tech and data in the world. And I’ve worked with clubs that could barely afford cones and GPS vests. What I’ve learned is this:
The most important variable in player development isn’t technology. It’s the environment.
In some of the teams I have worked with, we started making small, human-centered changes based on feedback. Players said they felt mentally drained during camp—sharing rooms, packed schedules, not enough downtime. So we gave them solo rooms. We reduced meetings. We added optional gym sessions. At first, not a lot of people came.
But over time, something changed. As we gave them more autonomy and mental space, they started choosing to train. We didn’t push harder—we just created the right conditions for ownership. That’s COM-B behavior theory in action: Capability, Opportunity, Motivation. When you build environments that respect people’s needs, they show up.
Grassroots Deserves Better
This principle doesn’t just apply to elite teams—it’s even more critical at the grassroots. Right now, there are talented young female athletes being coached by people who are exhausted, underpaid, and unsupported. There are young coaches with potential who want to grow in the women’s game but get stuck in roles without mentorship or resources.
If we want to future-proof the women’s game, we have to invest in people, not just programs. Let’s train coaches from the ground up, place them in grassroots environments, and let them spend years observing, learning, and creating systems that work for the women and girls they’re coaching—not just copying what’s been done in the men’s game.
Time, Trust, and the Long View
In nature, growth takes time. You don’t build a forest by constantly uprooting trees. But in football, we still operate with short-term KPIs and reactionary staffing. No one asks: What’s happening in this environment? What support is missing? What’s the long-term vision?
Jane Goodall didn’t publish world-changing discoveries in her first week. She spent months observing, building trust, and respecting the process.
So why don’t we do the same?
What If We Rewrote the KPIs?
What if clubs also measured:
How proud players are to represent their team
How supported and safe staff feel in their roles
How much athletes feel ownership over their development
How well the environment reflects values like transparency, care, and inclusivity
Recently, at the Women in Sport Forum in London, I had the chance to hear Maggie Murphy speak. Her keynote really stuck with me. She challenged us to think beyond traditional performance markers and start defining unique KPIs for the women’s game—ones that actually reflect the values we say we care about.
She spoke about building a more resilient and sustainable ecosystem—not by copying the men's model, but by humanizing our structures, making space for well-being, purpose, pride, and collaboration. It was a powerful reminder that we’re allowed—expected, even—to define success differently.
What if our best metric of performance wasn’t just how strong a player becomes, but how deeply they thrive in the system we build around them?
Final Thought
We don’t need to make women’s football more like the men’s game.
We need to make it more like natural ecosystems—more interconnected, more responsive, more human. Let’s stop rushing toward flashy outcomes, and start doing what Jane did:
Observe.
Question assumptions.
Build trust.
Create space for growth.
And never underestimate the power of small changes in the right environment.
The future of the women’s game doesn’t just depend on more data—it depends on more care.
