Summary
Women’s football has surged - crowds, pro players and brand deals have risen, lifting standards globally.
Tactical sophistication has transformed the game - pressing, possession and advanced coaching now define play.
Ten managers - Sonia Bompastor, Emma Hayes, Sarina Wiegman and others - are steering clubs and nations into a new era of excellence.
The rise of women’s football has been evident for quite some time. Attendances, for example, offer one of the clearest signs of progress. In the Women’s Super League, average crowds have risen from around 1,000–2,000 per game in the 2015/16 season to 7,363 in 2024/25, with clubs such as Arsenal, Liverpool, and Chelsea now regularly hosting matches at their main stadiums.
Brand deals are now a common sight too, and the number of women able to play football as their full-time profession has increased tenfold. As a result, the overall standard of the game has continued to improve year after year. Another key development has been the introduction of more advanced tactics and a higher quality of football on display.
This progress is thanks in large part to the managers, tacticians, and thinkers at the helm of the top women’s clubs and national teams across the world. Where the game was once criticised for being too simple, it has now evolved into a sophisticated, dynamic spectacle. With that in mind, we’ve explored the current masterminds driving this evolution forward. So, without further ado, here are the 10 best managers in women’s football right now.
10 Laura Harvey
Seattle Reign
Laura Harvey
Laura Harvey is a titan of women’s football management, boasting a trophy-laden career with both Arsenal Women and OL Reign. At Arsenal (2008–2012), she led a dominant squad that lost just two league games in 2011, winning three consecutive WSL titles, two FA Women’s Cups, three Continental Cups, and claiming the 2011 FA WSL Manager of the Year award.
Her success continued in the NWSL with OL Reign (2013–present), where she guided the team to three NWSL Shields (2014, 2015, 2022), reached three Championship finals, and became the first coach to reach 100 regular-season wins in 2024. Harvey’s high-pressing, possession-based style, combined with her talent for developing stars like Megan Rapinoe and Rose Lavelle, defines her teams and shaped USWNT dominance unknowngly.
9 Bev Priestman
Wellington Phoenix
Bev Priestman
Bev Priestman is a highly credentialed manager known for leading Canada to a shock Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. She has a wealth of experience at international level, having served as an assistant coach for the England women's national team and coached various Canadian youth teams.
Following a ban related to a doping incident at the 2024 Paris Olympics, she has recently been appointed as the coach for the A-League Women's club, Wellington Phoenix, where she will be aiming to make up for lost time to potentially climb up this rankign further. Her other honorus include having been named IFFHS Women's World Best National Coach in 2021.
8 Pia Sundhage
Sweden
Pia Sundhage
Pia Sundhage remains one of the most respected and influential managers in women’s football. With a career that includes guiding the United States to two Olympic gold medals, leading Sweden to a silver at the 2016 Olympics, and steering Brazil to the Copa America Femenina title in 2022, her CV speaks for itself.
Sundhage is admired for her player-first approach, charismatic leadership, and ability to build cohesive, resilient squads that perform on the biggest stages. Her tactical acumen - particularly in creating compact, organised teams capable of frustrating even the strongest opponents - has earned her a reputation as one of the sharpest minds in the beautiful game.
That said, as the women’s game continues to evolve rapidly, Sundhage no longer sits at the very top of the managerial rankings as she once did. Age and the rise of a new generation of coaches with more modern tactical trends have seen her influence slightly wane, but her legacy and stature remain undeniable.
7 Renee Slegers
Arsenal
Renee Slegers
The fact that Renee Slegers, who guided Arsenal to the Champions League in her first full season in charge in the 2024/25 campaign, only ranks seventh on this list isn't a criticism of her own qualities, but rather a reminder of just how many success stories there have been in women's football recently.
In the grand scheme of things, Slegers is new to the scene, and will no doubt find herself climbing the ranks in coming seasons. From day one, the Dutchwoman, just 36, has focussed on building trust, belief, and unity within the group. Even in a short interim period, she transformed Arsenal’s performance, leading them to a blistering run of 10 wins and a draw in 11 matches.
A strong culture builder, Slegers puts a lot of effort into player-centric training and progression plans, and her open-mindedness has proven to be a perfect fit at the Emirates Stadium, having previously won back-to-back league titles in Sweden with FC Rosengard in 2021 and 2022.
6 Desiree Ellis
South Africa
Desiree Ellis
South African troubadour Desiree Ellis - who first made her mark as a player by scoring a hat-trick in Banyana Banyana's debut international match in 1993 - has since become one of the most influential figures in African women’s football. After initially stepping in as interim manager in 2016, she took full charge in 2018. Under her leadership, South Africa finished runners-up in the 2018 Africa Women’s Cup of Nations, securing their first-ever berth at the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
She followed this historic qualification by winning the continental crown in 2022, bringing home the first Women's AFCON title in the nation's history. Ellis continued breaking barriers on the global stage by guiding the team to the Round of 16 in the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup - the first time South Africa had advanced beyond the group stage - with a dramatic victory over Italy.
Ellis's extraordinary achievements have been recognised repeatedly: she’s a four-time CAF Women's Coach of the Year (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023). In 2023, she also received Momentum Coach of the Year at South Africa’s African women’s sport awards, and was ranked among the top national coaches globally by IFFHS.
5 Arthur Elias
Brazil
Arthur Elias
Corinthians are one of the most successful and recognisable clubs in Brazilian football, so when they relaunched their women’s team in 2015, there was immediate pressure to bring silverware back to Sao Paulo. At just 37 years old, Arthur Elias was entrusted with that task, and he wasted little time in delivering. Under his guidance, Corinthians quickly became the dominant force in South America, racking up 13 major titles during his tenure, including an astonishing three Copa Libertadores triumphs.
Elias’s pedigree was already established before Corinthians’ formal entry into the women’s top-flight, with a league title, a Copa Libertadores, and a Brazilian Cup already on his CV. That proven track record made him a natural choice when the Brazil women’s national team came calling in 2023. The decision has paid off: in his very first year in charge, the 43-year-old guided the Seleção all the way to the Olympic gold medal match, where they fell just short in a narrow 1–0 defeat to the United States. Even in defeat, Elias’s impact has been clear - Brazil look competitive, organised, and ambitious under his leadership, with plenty more still to come.
4 Jonatan Giraldez
Washington Spirit
Jonatan Giraldez
It's a surprise to many still that Jonatan Giraldez would ever decide to leave his Barcelona project behind. In Catalonia, the young coach, just 33, was piecing together a dynasty. In his three-year stint at the club between 2021 and 2024, he helped them win all three league titles on offer, as well as back-to-back Champions League titles, also thanks to a squad boasting Ballon d'Or royalty of Aitana Bonmati and Alexia Putellas.
He remains the only coach to have won IFFHS World's Best Woman Club Coach award twice, but now resides stateside with Washington Spirit, who are 12 points behind NWSL leaders KC Current at the time of writing. That said, once he finds a way to instil his 3 P's philosophy (Press, Possess, and Punish) into his new team, the Michele Kang-owned club can expect big things.
3 Sonia Bompastor
Chelsea
Sonia Bompastor
As a player, Sonia Bompastor was a habitual winner, having claimed eight league titles and two Champions League trophies with Lyon. That winning mentality has clearly carried over into her managerial career. Cementing her legacy as one of the greatest figures in Lyon’s history, she guided Les Lyonnaises to a further three league titles and a third Champions League, thanks to her innate trait of being seemingly cut from a different cloth.
It’s worth noting that Chelsea were already in solid shape before she took the reins at Stamford Bridge last summer. Yet in her maiden campaign, Bompastor led the Blues to a remarkable treble, winning the League Cup, FA Cup, and WSL - Chelsea’s sixth league title in a row. To climb even higher on this list, her next challenge will be to end the west London club’s European trophy drought, which became a thorn in the next manager's side.
2 Emma Hayes
USA
Chelsea manager Emma Hayes
Women's Super League - Everton v Chelsea - Walton Hall Park, Liverpool, Britain - November 12, 2023 Chelsea manager Emma Hayes before the match Action Images via Reuters/Jason Cairnduff
Indeed, Emma Hayes never won a Champions League with Chelsea, a lone shadow over an otherwise glittering career. But her no-nonsense, ringmaster-esque approach - perhaps somewhat reminiscent of her male counterpart Jose Mourinho - delivered seven league titles, five FA Cups, and two League Cups across just 12 years.
Boasting six Manager of the Year awards during that time, Hayes presided over complete domestic dominance. Now, as the relatively recently appointed head coach of the U.S. women’s national team, she faces the task of reawakening a sleeping giant and guiding them back to World Cup glory. To do so, she will need to outwit one particular manager - using her punditry insights from international tournaments as homework to defeat England.
1 Sarina Wiegman
England
england sarina wiegman-1
It could quite easily be contested that England has two monarchs: the royal family and the lionesses. At the head of the latter is Sarina Wiegman, who has reached the last three finals of tournaments she has been involved in, winning back-to-back European Championships - something their male counterparts haven't ever been able to do.
On the touchline - often rooted to the same spot, seemingly pulling the strings with just her eyes - she radiates steely confidence. What sets the Dutchwoman apart from her international rivals is her knack for turning the tide, making subtle tweaks that transform tight contests into triumphs, even when the deck is stacked against her. In their latest Euros run, England went in at halftime on the back foot in all three knockout matches, yet marched to the beat of their manager’s drum to reclaim their crown as the darlings of European football.
She is also an incredible man manager. Winger Beth Mead captured Wiegman’s impact best: “We’ve made ourselves very vulnerable… Sarina herself has made herself really vulnerable… That gives us so much more togetherness, so much more trust … Sarina has really instilled that into us as a team. She’s got our back, we’ve got her back.”