Stoney, who won 130 Caps for England and was the captain of Britain at the 2012 Olympics, was in charge of the wave of San Diego almost three years later Renaining as Manchester United Manager in 2021.
The NWSL club was a new franchise when it became a coach and took them to third place and then in first place during the first two seasons.
They arrived twice in the semi-finals of the season’s end play-offs, which crown the league champions, but their third season had not continued in the same trajectory with just three wins after 14 games.
She saw the work as a long term project. She had experienced a painful period of her partner, Megan, and three children – Teddy and Tilly and Tilly, and Tilly, Willow – when she moved to the US, but they ended up solving their visa problems, allowing them to gather and set up their family in California.
“It took 22 months to publicize them, we were 22 months apart, we weren’t even there a year [together] And I lost my job, “she says.
“If I’m honest, I didn’t deserve to lose my job either, then it made it even harder, with the hits we had, we just had a little dive. It was nothing important.
“So, to be treated this way, after all that had been done and sacrificed and all that had been achieved, it was very, very difficult to swallow at 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, for me, it’s inexcusable to do with a family.”
The day their children should be back to school in August in San Diego, after the summer holidays, was Stoney’s education, then the school at home.
It was a period that she describes as “one of the most difficult moments of my life.”
She says, “It made me wonder if I wanted to stay in the game, because if the game chew and spits you like that, after all we had sacrificed to be there, and after what I had achieved in a short time and what we had achieved as a club, it made me question the game.
“I received offers quickly after the announcement and said no to them all, if they were right or wrong, because I wanted to take time. I needed to make sure I solved our lives.
“My priority was my family [and] How we returned to San Diego. “
