Kay Cossington is to go away her function because the Soccer Affiliation’s ladies’s technical director later this yr.
In command of the ladies’s technical workforce throughout the FA since 2016, she’s going to depart to change into head of girls’s soccer at funding agency Sixth Road and chief government of Bay Collective, a multi-club world organisation being launched by the homeowners of NWSL facet Bay FC.
Cossington performed a key function 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 closing.
“We’re sorry to see Kay go however she leaves with our honest thanks for her contribution to our profitable England groups, significantly the event of the Lionesses pathway important to the Euro success and the silver medal on the World Cup,” FA chief government Mark Bullingham mentioned in an announcement to BBC Sport.
Bullingham added that Cossington leaves after 20 years of “unimaginable dedication to the ladies’s recreation”.
Cossington, who will depart the FA on 31 Could earlier than starting her new function, mentioned in an announcement: “For many years, I’ve studied ladies’s soccer at all ages and rank, throughout areas, leagues, and kinds.
“My conclusion is evident – there’s a higher solution to develop gamers on and off the pitch, construct championship golf equipment, and preserve our athletes on the centre of every thing we do. We solely want the sources and the need to do it.
“As ladies’s soccer has skilled fast development lately, I imagine we’re at a important inflection level. Now’s the time to make use of this momentum to set even increased requirements and begin constructing one thing new and lasting to take the game to its subsequent glass-breaking degree.”
A former West Ham participant, Cossington joined the FA in 2005 because the Underneath-15s coach and was a part of the teaching employees that gained the underneath 19 European Championship 4 years later.
She turned the pinnacle of girls’s technical division in 2016 and was named the ladies’s technical director in 2020.
Other than being majority homeowners of Bay FC, Sixth Road can also be a strategic funding associate for sports activities groups together with Barcelona, Actual Madrid, the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Yankees.
Evaluation – ‘An excellent loss to the FA’
BBC Sport’s Emma Sanders
Cossington’s function within the Lionesses’ latest success has been important and she or he has been a key a part of Sarina Wiegman’s employees.
In addition to main preparations for main tournaments – securing England’s base camps at Euro 2022, the 2023 Girls’s World Cup and this summer time’s Euro 2025 – Cossington has offered Wiegman with sources and experience.
She has designed and overseen a number of programmes to extend range in grassroots soccer and improve alternatives for feminine coaches within the elite recreation – two areas which have seen large enchancment throughout Cossington’s time within the function.
Cossington has additionally been a robust spokesperson for the ladies’s recreation and shining a light-weight on the success of the Lionesses.
Her perception on ladies’s soccer in England might be an excellent loss to the FA, which has lately misplaced key figures Kelly Simmons – former director of the ladies’s skilled recreation – and Baroness Sue Campbell – former director of girls’s soccer.