Australian coach Belinda Wilson has enjoyed a fascinating career. From Brisbane Roar’s Liberty A-League team to head coach and technical director in Guam, working for the AFC and, now, influencing change at FIFA. She shares her story with KEEPUP’s Sacha Pisani.
Imagine being a nine-year-old girl and passionate about football, only to be told you can’t play.
“I was a bit confused. I’m like what do you mean? It was the first time I was really told no I can’t do anything. They said you’re a girl and we have nowhere to play for you,” Belinda Wilson told KEEPUP.
“But the president and secretary were good friends and neighbours. Byron Bay, at the time, was a very small community. They wrote letters for two or three years and finally got the local association to say yes for me to play.
“I had to play in a women’s team in the first division. I only lasted a season or season and a half because I had nothing in common with 25-40 year olds as a 12-year-old.”
It did not dampen her appetite for football. In fact, Wilson is now Senior Technical Development Manager of Women’s Football at FIFA. An Australian from Byron Bay is now in a position to influence the game on a global scale.
“I pinch myself,” she said, with the FIFA Women’s World Cup just over a month away.
“Sometimes I go, how? I feel privileged and thankful to be given the opportunities. I’m here because people believed in me.
“I’m still in a dream. I’m still in that fog. I still haven’t work out what that potential could be. I’m still maybe a quarter of the way through my own journey that I’m trying to do here.
“I have a really big project we will launch at the World Cup. It will change the way we train female players. It will change the way sport sees female athletes. To be in that position, I can’t believe it.”
Falling out of love with football
Wilson, speaking from Zurich, is in a powerful position, with her role able to impact the women’s game on the biggest stage.
Supporting the development of women’s football from a technical perspective across the globe, she is in the midst of piloting a preparation program and she is currently working on FIFA’s Coach Mentorship Program, which is 12 months into its existence. Then there is a female health project that is poised to be launched.
It is an exciting time for Wilson and FIFA, but there was a period when the passionate Aussie fell out of love with football.
It took her two years to watch a game of football following her time with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
Wilson had reached a crossroads in her life – football or ambulance officer? She was a week away from completing her ambulance training but she needed a job and applied for a role at Football NSW because she was on the dole.
18 months into her position as Female Participation Officer at Football NSW left her working ridiculous hours and frustrated. It also led her to the AFC in 2006 and eventually the role of Women’s Football Acting Director in Malaysia.
“I went to (former Perth Glory manager) Alastair Edwards (and) jokingly said, ‘do you need a full-time assistant?’ He goes, ‘I’m part-time myself!’ I just wanted full-time work. I saw him after training and he said there was a role at AFC,” Wilson, who has been working for FIFA in some capacity since 2007, recalled.
“I was up for anything. I had just split with my boyfriend. Two other people – (Alen) Stajcic spoke to me because I was his assistant at NSWIS at the time and said there was a role at AFC – and John Boultbee reached out too. I had three people reaching out to apply. I’d always thought they’d spoken to each other.
“I got the role. It was a really interesting move. Totally naïve going in. Had no clue. Going to a city of seven million people and you’re the only one with blonde hair and white skin. But it was such an amazing experience.
“I was there for two years and there was a restructure and they made me acting director.
“Looking back at my time, I learned a lot about the ugly side of football. I actually fell out of love with football. I stopped watching football completely at the end of my time. It became a negative experience.
“It was like when I was nine years old again and told I wasn’t allowed to play. Now I’m in a position where I’m supposed to be supporting women’s football and we were doing minimum. I couldn’t understand why we were doing the minimum. AFC were in a bad space at the time.
“I read a book called ‘Foul’ by Andrew Jennings. All of a sudden, all these moments I had in the AFC started to click. I really looked inside myself and I said is this who I want to work for? I have some really good friends and they said I was changing. I was like okay whatever. But then I was like my friends were right.
“I walked away and it took maybe two years before I started watching football again. It was a PHD for me. I came in knowing nothing and walked away going oh my god this is how football works, and I don’t agree with it. It was then when I said I’d never work in administration again and now I’m like oops.
“I don’t regret the decision. I have some fond memories with the people I worked with and the competitions I was involved with. It’s provided a good foundation for where I am today.
She added: “I was not ready to be in that decision. I shouldn’t have ever been in that position. I didn’t have the qualifications or the experience. Why I got the job, I have an understanding because I was a female and they wanted a female in that role.”
Coaching Brisbane Roar
Wilson started coaching young and it was because of her younger brother.
“Where I really fell in love with it was when my little brother, who was six, came home from school and said you’re my coach for football. I was like no, sorry. Saturday morning’s definitely not hanging out with you dude,” she joked.
“My mum said he had no coach so they put my name down. I turned up to that session and had no clue literally. (I) had 20 six year olds running around and I just gave them a ball. I said okay, we will play some games and have some fun. I literally haven’t looked back.”
From that first session as a teenager, Wilson was hooked.
“I came home and I had the biggest smile on my face. I had so much fun. I had no clue what I was doing but I enjoyed it,” she said.
“Went to the next session and obviously had the boys and girls until they were U13-14s. The only reason why I stopped coaching the boys was because my brother and I were having too many arguments on the pitch that weren’t involved with football. He was becoming a tyrant teenager and I was in my 20s.”
Fast forward to 2012 and Wilson had just spent almost three years as a head coach with Coerver in Oslo, Norway. She was in Japan for the Under-20 World Cup and had been encouraged by some of her mentors to apply for the Brisbane Roar job in the Liberty A-League.
Wilson felt she wasn’t good enough as she had been only coaching kids. She landed the job in 2012 and by the end of her tenure in 2016, finished with a Premiership and back-to-back Grand Final appearances in 2013 and 2014.
“Loved it,” she said of her time in Brisbane. “My first season, I had so much fun… I was privileged to have the team I had. They knew each other so well. They’ve represented Australia at youth and senior level.
“That first season I had no idea. There were no expectations. I didn’t feel pressure. No one knew me because I had been away for so long. There was no outside pressure. I had an inkling of what I had but never understood at the time.
“It wasn’t until maybe season two or three that the outside pressure started and I allowed it to creep in. From my side, I started to lose the fun aspect. It started to become a chore. There were moments that were really difficult.
“My third season, Mel Andreatta had stepped down into the U17s at the time and she was doing full-time school. At the time (Pam Grant) Pammy had stepped down too. All of a sudden, I had no coaching staff that I trusted.
“It was new staff coming, at the time it was virtually volunteer. I ended up taking a lot of that workload. I was drowning.
“My last season, it was fortunate I had Jeff Hopkins come back in. We had lost a lot of the players. We were able to get back to where we were in my first season. It was a bit more serious in terms of serious fun because we’re trying to achieve something.
“But I really had someone who I could bounce ideas off, support. It was a weird situation because he was obviously the head coach and Championship-winning coach with the girls and then through circumstance became the assistance coach to me.
“But we both decided that we would coach the team together. There was no hierarchy in terms of coaching. We decided our role and responsibilities.
“The whole experience was one of the fondest memories I’ve had, towards the end it wasn’t, it was ugly. But it’s a learning moment. Towards the end I didn’t see it coming and when it did happen, I should’ve seen it coming.”
Working with some of Australia’s best players
During her time with the Roar, Wilson was surrounded by established and up-and-coming stars.
There was Matildas legend Clare Polkinghorne, Tameka Yallop, Katrina Gorry and Hayley Raso, who are currently gearing up for a World Cup on home soil.
“They taught me so much. They taught me what was expected. They pushed me as much as I pushed them,” she said.
The most-capped player in Matildas history heading into next month’s World Cup on home soil, two-time Julie Dolan Medallist Polkinghorne won a pair of Premierships and Championships as a Roar player.
“Polks, she is such an amazing person and an amazing leader. She won’t say much but her presence, if you don’t work hard you’re going to let her down,” Wilson said.
“You feel that. You actually feel, s***, that was s*** and I feel bad. That’s her presence and her driving environments. She drove that team and that environment.”
Yallop now plays for Brann in Norway but in two stints with he Roar, the 110-time Australia international got her hands on three Premier’s Plates and two Championships.
“My first memory of her was she turned up in a pair of thongs,” Wilson remembered. “She had an ankle injury.
“I was like, ‘hi, I’m the new coach. Is your foot injured?’ She was like yeah. I’m like nice appropriate shoe. Good to see. From then on she didn’t wear thongs. She was a smart kid and read between the lines.
“She wanted excellence all the time and she was a perfectionist. There is a side of her that you can sit down and have a really good talk. I used to pick up her and (Elise Kellond-Knight) KK because they lived on the Gold Coast, and I did too.
“I helped them get to training. We’d have really good talks about what we’re trying to do and how the team’s going on and off the pitch.”
There was also Raso, who is reportedly poised to join Real Madrid in Spain after leaving Manchester City in the Women’s Super League (WSL).
“Hayley was amazing,” she added. “100 miles an hour, on and off the pitch. She was just so quick. So gifted.
“Those early development phases, we were trying to manage her. She was so impatient because she wanted to be on the pitch. Some players are driven and she is just driven.
“I’d have to manage her in a game because she’d get a yellow card, she’d run in and smash somebody. Depending on the game, you’d be like, oh I need to bring her off.
“She wasn’t happy coming off and nor should she be, but it was about managing her so we could get more out of her.”
Then there was Katrina Gorry, who was playing in the Liberty A-League last season but is now based abroad with Vittsjo GIK, having established herself in the heart of he Matildas’ midfield.
Her first season with the Roar was during Wilson’s rookie campaign.
“One of the best players I’ve ever worked with technically and tactically,” Wilson said. “She had something and she had something the rest of the team at the time didn’t have because she was able to unlock teams.
“Her transition from defence to attack – I’d never seen in Australian football. I had spent a lot of my time in Europe and I’m like oh you could play in Europe and you should.
“I remember her coming to me in her first session. She was trailing. I didn’t think she was trialling, I just thought she was one of the players at the time. I didn’t realise she hadn’t been playing for Brisbane Roar. She’s a Brisbane kid but I didn’t realise she hadn’t been in the squad.
“When I saw her play that first training session, I’m like phwoah. She came up to me and said she needs to know. I’m like what do you need to know? She needed to know if she was in the team or not. I told her if she isn’t turning up next training session I’ll be disappointed. That’s all I said and thankfully she came back.
“Now seeing her in the Australian team, she is at another level completely. She is now stepping into that leadership role. I’m watching her play and going yep you are special.”
Her Guam experience
When Wilson left the Roar in 2016, she needed a job.
She was offered a short-term role by Guam to oversee the 2017 EAFF E-1 Football Championship in East Asia.
Initially Wilson said no as she was still with the Roar. Then, things changed.
“(They) sent me an email asking if I knew of anyone who could come in to coach the team short term. I told them I was available,” she said.
But when she got to Guam, it is not what she expected.
“I went over for seven or eight weeks, thinking I was getting a team to coach and prepare for the East Asian Championships.
“They were (in) round two of that tournament. I got there and there was not even 12 players. I’m like where is the squad? They were all over in America, at college. I was like, okay where are the local girls? They said this is all they have.
“We finished that tournament and I was coming back to Australia and the general secretary was on the same flight and he said they wanted to offer me the full-time position as head coach of the women’s national team.
“I said it could work, but what you sold me prior to the tournament and what the reality is is very different. They said for me to come up for a plan and they’ll support it. I’m like yeah lets do it.
“Went to Guam and they said would I mind doing the technical director job too. Then I was in charge of all their football but it was doable because their playing population was 5,000.”
So, Wilson went on to juggle two positions as head coach of the women’s team and technical director.
There were various challenges – facilities, weather, access to players and more.
“On the island they had teams, not clubs. They had clubs at youth level but they weren’t coaching because there’s no facilities,” she said.
“Guam has one training centre and that’s where every single game of football is played from U6s through to Masters. They’re playing in 36 degree heat, 100% humidity and in Australia we’d be going there’s no way we’re playing. (I) had to be creative and think outside of the box; I enjoyed the challenge.
“Guam (people) are actually US citizens, so technically they can also play for the USA because they have a US passport. We had a lot of those players and in better college programs stateside.”
In her words, Guam’s men’s program was a “mess”, because the players felt disrespected and pushed aside after the federation withdrew the team from the 2019 AFC Asian Cup. It was the first time the nation had reached the third round of qualifying. The federation could not afford it.
“You can imagine the players in the men’s team,” Wilson said. “They were right, in my opinion, to be annoyed and angry. It created a challenge for me as a technical director because my job wasn’t only working women’s football, it was also working men’s football and what they saw was I was putting all my effort in the women’s game and not in the men’s game.
“But working the national team and TD, it’s hard. There aren’t enough hours in a day.”
Wilson needed more “expertise”. That is when she brought in former Brisbane Roar, Wellington Phoenix and North Queensland Fury defender Karl Dodd.
“I worked with Karl at Brisbane Roar and we did our A License together. I told him to apply. They actually went with someone else but that person decided they couldn’t do it,” she said.
“He was up for the challenge. Between the two of us, what we gained out of the experience was again to test our knowledge.”
Dodd went on to spend four years as head coach of the men’s national team before returning to Australia last year.
As for Wilson, the Guam experience paved the way for her to move into her current position at FIFA.
“What I learned as a technical director is to create change in someone’s life in football because you’re providing the opportunity and access to play. You have the power to do that and allow that play as far up the chain,” she said.
“What we were able to do in Guam was to create a whole pathway for nine-10 year olds all the way through to the senior women’s and men’s team. We were able to look after the local kids and showcase their culture. It falls into my value system.
“We were able to have almost a 50-50 playing group from the US and Guam. What also happened is a lot of the local girls and boys were starting to get into college. That’s success. Guam isn’t really a rich country, it’s really expensive. So to get kids on a scholarship across to get educated and to come back to the island better educated.
“Karl and I were like don’t worry about the result because the result is football but here we’re able to change peoples lives.”
