Hayley Ladd: Everton’s unselfish Wales defender – and the perfect carpool companion
Hayley Ladd drives a modest black four-door that is not so much cluttered as happily lived-in.
With a little over 10 minutes to make a mile-and-a-half journey on foot to the nearest station in time to catch my train, Everton’s Wales international midfielder, as if sensing my predicament, points to the vehicle and asks Emma Watson, the former Manchester United team-mate she still carpools with, to shift her bags in the back.
Ten minutes earlier, Ladd had been answering ’s questions about why two other former team-mates, Jayde Riviere and Phallon Tullis-Joyce, said they would miss her “swivel hips”. Now, in the driving seat as we zip along curling country lanes, the 31-year-old is the one doing the asking: about hiking spots in Switzerland ahead of the Women’s European Championship there this summer and why I thought it was a good idea to walk along these B-roads.
“Oh, I almost missed the station!” Ladd interjects, before triple-checking my train has not already gone and that she isn’t leaving me stranded in Halewood, on the southern outskirts of Liverpool.
Cynics will claim clear tactics here: a ride for a positive write-up. But ‘transactional’ is not in Ladd’s vocabulary. Insisting a relative stranger get into her car to catch their last train home is perhaps the purest distillation of the selfless and protective instinct for which she is known on the pitch.
Ladd is speaking to The Athletic a short while after joining Everton from United in January.
The move ended a five-and-a-half year stay at the Manchester club, with whom Ladd navigated their first season in the Women’s Super League in 2019-20, before eventually helping Marc Skinner’s side lift the FA Cup by beating Tottenham Hotspur at Wembley last season.
That journey has seen Ladd go from young and hungry 25-year-old to among the most consistent defensive midfielders in the women’s game and one of her country’s most important players ahead of this year’s Euros — the first-ever major tournament for Wales’ senior women’s national team, and also one of the big reasons she is now at Everton.
“It helped having that motivation of having to get out of United,” she says. “I felt my role reached an end anyway. So the timing was good, and I’m grateful Everton showed interest.”
Ladd credits the candour with which Everton manager Brian Sorensen approached her signing for making the move feel unquestionably right.
“Brian’s very straight-down-the-line, and it was really refreshing to have that clarity,” she says. “Knowing, ‘This is our style of play, this is what we believe in, this is the role you would hopefully play, your profile suits it because X, Y and Z’. Listening to him, I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, this is perfect — exactly what I need’.”
Ladd is also what Everton needed.
Watching Sorensen’s side in action since her arrival, it’s difficult to imagine the team playing through Ladd at the base of midfield, quietly dictating, shuttling, putting out fires and allowing the attack to flourish. Her unfussy, unselfish industry regularly inspires murmurs of applause from the crowd during home matches at Walton Hall Park, an admiration for the simpler graces.
That appreciation is deserved. Ask people in the women’s game for an underrated star and Ladd is one of the first names mentioned. A glance at her Instagram post bidding farewell to United is testament to how she is viewed, too, with former team-mates not only wishing her well but bemoaning her exit. And what was that of her hips?
“Oh!,” Ladd breaks out laughing. “It was a running joke at United, sometimes I could worm out of situations in midfield. In reality, my hips cause me the most agg (aggravation) out of everything, in terms of my body. But it’s nice that I have that running joke with the United girls. They’re amazing. Any player that leaves or comes, they’re very supportive. It’s a really wholesome environment for that reason.”
Ladd has started four WSL matches since joining Everton, having played only three times, all off the bench, for United in the first half of this season, and clocked up almost half the 607 minutes of action she got in 11 appearances in the competition across all of 2023-24. From a Wales perspective, the consistent game time is critical.
Ladd, who swaps her usual midfield berth for a centre-back partnership with Liverpool defender Gemma Evans when in Wales colours, is set to make her 100th international appearance when they face Italy in their Nations League group opener in Monza on Friday. She would become just the 10th Welsh footballer, male or female, to reach that milestone.
Wales will be hoping to make a better impression in their second crack at League A, the top flight of the Nations League, than last time. Under manager Gemma Grainger, they were relegated in the inaugural 2023-24 edition after finishing bottom of a group containing Germany, Denmark and Iceland with just one point from the six games. Fortunately, qualifying for the Euros has also won them promotion for this second edition.
“We were a little bit too experimental with some of the tactics,” says Ladd. “We didn’t get the balance quite right, so we need to be a lot harder to beat and get that practice in ready for the Euros.”
The practice will be crucial. Wales have been drawn in a difficult group with England, the Netherlands and France — three of the quarter-finalists from the previous European Championship in 2022, half of its final four and the competition’s eventual winners, as well as the runners-up at the most recent World Cup a year later. Those three are also all in the top 11 of FIFA’s current world rankings while Wales are 30th, the lowest of the 16 teams at these Euros.
“It was tough when you see the group,” Ladd says with a smile. “But as a team we play better against better opposition. We know we’re really resilient, hard-working, and we’ve built on our threats to counter against teams. We know that we can apply ourselves the best way possible. And when it’s your first tournament, we’re really happy that we’ve made that first step and we can ride on that good feeling, be a little more fearless and make a good account of ourselves.”
Ladd also believes Wales can draw confidence from their path to Switzerland.
A team plagued by near-misses in trying to get to major tournaments had history against them as they faced the Republic of Ireland in the second leg of a qualification play-off at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium in December, but won 2-1 for a 3-2 aggregate victory. Encouragingly, rather than national talisman and record caps holder Jess Fishlock, now 38, dragging the team across the line, a new generation of young talents in Ffion Morgan, Hannah Cain and Carrie Jones did so instead.
“When the final whistle blew I was so… stunned,” Ladd says. “ You had to focus so much in that last 20 minutes. They were throwing everything at us, so it almost didn’t feel real until the celebrations, we’re in the changing room, the champagne and beer flying. Afterwards, we all went back to a function room at the hotel booked out for friends and family. It was constant singing. (The team’s social-media manager) Callum Ellis was doing renditions of Piano Man on his harmonica. It was the most incredible celebration.”
Their achievement warranted a proper party.
Wales’ Euros qualifying bid could have been upended early last January, three months before their campaign even started, when Grainger quit to become head coach of Norway’s women’s team. Her exit took the Welsh players and the Football Association of Wales (FAW) officials by surprise, forcing the governing body into a frantic search for a replacement.
Rhian Wilkinson’s appointment late the following month was met with excitement and trepidation.
The former Canada international’s pedigree as a player spoke for itself: 181 games for her country, two Olympic bronze medals and four World Cup tournaments. But her managerial career was far more limited — stints as an assistant coach with Canada and England, followed by one season as head coach of Portland Thorns in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), with whom she won the title but then resigned after she was investigated, and cleared, over her conduct.
“In terms of timing, we built year on year with different coaches, building on those experiences of not getting over the line,” says Ladd.
“Rhian has been amazing in harnessing what we have, not trying to change loads but really using the whole squad, giving players opportunities and being methodical in preparation but not stressful. That helped us build a bit of fearlessness to say, ‘Yeah, we haven’t had any luck before so let’s go out, not in a blaze of glory, but let’s make our own luck’.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Everton, Wales, UK Women's Football
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