I was effectively homeless after getting sacked—Stoney
Source: http://richportaltv.com
Last June, Casey Stoney was only supposed to be briefly returning to England for a funeral when she and her family were stranded in the nation, unable to return to their California home.
Upon landing on British soil, the former England captain was informed by her agent that she had been sacked as head coach of NWSL club San Diego Wave.
“When I got fired, it terminated our visas with immediate effect whilst I was in the UK, pretty much rendering me and my partner homeless, with three children,” she tells BBC Sport.
As she had been outside of the US when her sacking happened and her visa was dependent on her work, she had no way of returning without finding another sponsor.
That led to a turbulent few months for the 42-year-old, who was left questioning whether she even wanted to keep working in football.
Now the former Manchester United boss is taking on international management for the first time in her new role as Canada coach and is finally back to doing what she loves—getting out on the training pitch and working with her players.
Stoney, who won 130 caps for England and captained Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics, had been in charge of San Diego Wave for nearly three years after resigning as Manchester United manager in 2021.
The NWSL club was a new franchise when she became head coach, and she led them to third place and then top spot during the first two seasons.
They twice reached the semi-finals of the end-of-season play-offs, which crowns the league’s champions, but her third season had not continued on the same trajectory with just three wins after 14 games.
She considered the work to be a long-term endeavor. When she initially arrived in the US, she had gone through a difficult time apart from her girlfriend, Megan, and their three children—the youngest being Willow, the twins Teddy and Tilly—but they had finally worked out their visa problems, allowing them to be reunited and establish their family home in California.
“It took 22 months to get them out there; we were 22 months apart; we weren’t even out there a year [together], and I lost my job,” she says.
“If I’m honest, I didn’t think I deserved to lose my job either, so that made it even tougher; with the successes that we had, we just had a little dip. It wasn’t even anything major.
“So to be treated in that way, after everything that had been done and sacrificed and everything that had been achieved, it was hard to swallow on a personal level, but it was more what happened to my family.
“I have three young children; they were nine and six at the time; they didn’t have a home. So that, for me, is inexcusable to do to a family.”
The day her children were supposed to be back at school in August in San Diego following their summer break came and went, so Stoney took on homeschooling herself.
It was a period she describes as “one of the hardest times in my life.”.
She says, “It did make me question if I wanted to stay in the game because if the game chews you up and spits you out like that, after everything that we had sacrificed to be there, and after what I had achieved in a short space of time, and what we had achieved as a club, it did make me question the game.
“I got offers quite quickly after the announcement, and I said no to all of them, whether they were right or wrong, because I wanted to take time. I needed to make sure I sorted our lives out.
“My priority was my family [and] how do we get back to San Diego.”
She is taking over a country that is ranked sixth in the world but has experienced its turmoil.
During last summer’s Paris Olympics, in which Canada reached the quarterfinals, two members of the team’s coaching staff were sent home for flying a drone over a training session held by New Zealand, their opponents in a group game.
Their head coach, Bev Priestman, another Englishwoman, was given a year-long ban by world governing body FIFA, and Canada, who had won Olympic gold at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games, were docked six points.
Priestman “Did you reach out and wish me luck?” says Stoney, but they have had no other communication and the new Canada coach is keen to focus on the future, with the 2027 World Cup on the horizon.
She met the majority of her players for the first time over the last two weeks as Canada competed in a four-team tournament, the Pinatar Cup, in Spain, which they won following a 7-0 thrashing of Chinese Taipei, a 2-0 win over Mexico, and a 1-1 draw with China.
“This team excites me,” she says. “I do think they’ve got so much potential.
“What they were able to achieve last year in difficult circumstances shows what they’re capable of, but there’s so much more to come.”