technical

Kay Cossington is to depart her position because the Soccer Affiliation’s girls’s technical director later this yr.

Answerable for the ladies’s technical workforce throughout the FA since 2016, she’s going to depart to change into head of ladies’s soccer at funding agency Sixth Road and chief government of Bay Collective, a multi-club international organisation being launched by the homeowners of NWSL facet Bay FC.

Cossington performed a key position within the appointment of England head coach Sarina Wiegman in 2020 and oversaw the workforce’s historic Euro 2022 triumph and run to the 2023 World Cup remaining.

“We’re sorry to see Kay go however she leaves with our honest thanks for her contribution to our successful England groups, notably the event of the Lionesses pathway essential to the Euro success and the silver medal on the World Cup,” FA chief government Mark Bullingham mentioned in a press release to BBC Sport.

Bullingham added that Cossington leaves after 20 years of “unbelievable dedication to the ladies’s sport”.

Cossington, who will depart the FA on 31 Could earlier than starting her new position, mentioned in a press release: “For many years, I’ve studied girls’s soccer at all ages and rank, throughout areas, leagues, and kinds.

“My conclusion is obvious – there’s a higher method to develop gamers on and off the pitch, construct championship golf equipment, and maintain our athletes on the centre of all the things we do. We solely want the assets and the desire to do it.

“As girls’s soccer has skilled speedy development in recent times, I consider we’re at a essential inflection level. Now could be the time to make use of this momentum to set even greater requirements and begin constructing one thing new and lasting to take the game to its subsequent glass-breaking stage.”

A former West Ham participant, Cossington joined the FA in 2005 because the Below-15s coach and was a part of the teaching workers that gained the below 19 European Championship 4 years later.

She grew to become the top of ladies’s technical division in 2016 and was named the ladies’s technical director in 2020.

Aside from being majority homeowners of Bay FC, Sixth Road can be a strategic funding companion for sports activities groups together with Barcelona, Actual Madrid, the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Yankees.

Evaluation – ‘An amazing loss to the FA’

BBC Sport’s Emma Sanders

Cossington’s position within the Lionesses’ current success has been vital and she or he has been a key a part of Sarina Wiegman’s workers.

In addition to main preparations for main tournaments – securing England’s base camps at Euro 2022, the 2023 Ladies’s World Cup and this summer season’s Euro 2025 – Cossington has supplied Wiegman with assets and experience.

She has designed and overseen a number of programmes to extend variety in grassroots soccer and improve alternatives for feminine coaches within the elite sport – two areas which have seen large enchancment throughout Cossington’s time within the position.

Cossington has additionally been a powerful spokesperson for the ladies’s sport and shining a light-weight on the success of the Lionesses.

Her perception on girls’s soccer in England will likely be an ideal loss to the FA, which has not too long ago misplaced key figures Kelly Simmons – former director of the ladies’s skilled sport – and Baroness Sue Campbell – former director of ladies’s soccer.