If you ask WyScout what Rachel Daly’s best action is, the world’s largest digital football video and data scouting platform will tell you it is her header versus Brighton & Hove Albion in January 2026. Daly, grappling hardest, springing highest, perfectly judging the cross so that the ball bounces below Brighton ‘keeper Chiamaka Nnadozie. It is simple, almost too easy. Quintessential Daly.
WyScout is not wrong. Yet, the irony of Daly’s decade-long professional playing career is that, so often, her most obvious best action is one she is not always actually in the position to do.
The Aston Villa forward can claim an almost intimate understanding of every position: forward, winger, second-striker, wide midfielder, deep-lying midfielder, left wing-back, left-back, left-sided centre-back. During her first season at St. John’s University in New York City in 2012, Daly’s head coach played the 18-year-old everywhere, including goalkeeper, during training sessions (Daly was redshirted her freshman year due to academic eligibility rules).
“I was literally filling in everywhere,” Daly laughs, sitting in the player’s lounge of Aston Villa Women’s Bodymoor Heath training complex alongside The Athletic. “I had conversations, told him I didn’t really love left back, it wasn’t my preferred position. He watched me in training.” Daly smiles. “He was like “yeah, you’re a striker for us.”
Daly commemorated the decision with a hat-trick on her debut, in a 5-0 win against Fordham in August 2013. From there, Daly led St. John’s on its most decorated three-year journey, including its first-ever Big East conference title in 2015, while also becoming the programme’s first-ever player named a First Team All-American and the first drafted to the National Women’s Soccer League.
Rachel Daly played six years in the NWSL with the Houston Dash. (Wilf Thorne / Getty Images)
It was a glimpse into the pay-off that comes with subscribing to Daly as a forward. In her six seasons with the NWSL’s Houston Dash, she became the team’s all-time goalscorer with 42 goals, while also clinching the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup and earning both Golden Boot and MVP.
Even so, Daly’s 2022-23 Women’s Super League Golden Boot winning-campaign at Villa — during which she scored 22 goals in 22 appearances leading Villa’s line, matching the WSL’s all-time scoring record and becoming the first English player to win the award since Ellen White in 2018 — was couched between two summers playing left-back as England won Euro 2022 and reached the 2023 Women’s World Cup final.
And perhaps the greatest myth of Daly’s career is that this versatility has come easily or, even, intentionally. Daly’s career has been a series of decisions taken in pursuit of becoming an elite striker, only to find the decisions have made her even more appealing elsewhere.
It is why the 34-year-old remains one of England’s most enigmatic forwards. A player who has scored on four separate team debuts, who is more than capable of incredible goalscoring, yet seemingly condemned to always reverifying her credentials.
Daly is not bitter. Sitting in the player’s lounge of Aston Villa Women’s Bodymoor Heath training complex, she dutifully recites the mantra of polymaths everywhere: “I’ll play wherever I’m asked.”
But Daly knows where she is at her best.
Ten years on from her decision to enter the NWSL draft and embark on an unconventional but exhilarating career, The Athletic sits down with Daly to analyse her game, in her own words.
Houston Dash debut goal, April 16, 2016, Dash 3-1 Chicago Red Stars
“Daly will pick up the scrap.”
It’s a fitting choice of words to accompany Daly’s first goal for the Houston Dash, scored on her debut against the Chicago Red Stars.
“God that headband,” Daly laughs. The goal’s timing was crucial. Despite finishing her career at St. John’s University as its most decorated women’s player, setting a school career record 50 goals in three seasons and holding the single-season record of 22 goals, Daly dithered over whether she would enter the NWSL after graduation.
“I had offers in England and I wasn’t going to come into the NWSL,” Daly says, adding that the minimum salary in the NWSL at the time was £6,000 a year.
“But something told me, last minute, there’s a call for me here. I’m not ready to go home. I just remember being like, ‘Right, let’s see what this league’s about’.
“I trained with Carly Lloyd, learned a lot from her. I felt like I was going to make something of myself here. I remember that goal going in, thinking, ‘Yeah, this is where I’m meant to be, I’m going to have fun’.
“That goal was against Alyssa Naeher as well, a world-class goalkeeper. And it’s not a finish I’d say I execute often, I don’t really score many from there. But I remember that very vividly.”
Second Dash goal, April 15, 2017, Dash 2-0 Red Stars
One could argue Daly’s first two goals with Houston were of a vintage not immediately associated with the striker.
“I worked on this exact finish with Dave (Copeland Smith) the previous summer.”
Daly met Copeland Smith, an individual trainer, in the summer heading into her sophomore (second) year at St. John’s University. Feeling she needed to sharpen her competitive skills after spending a season unable to do more than train with the team (Daly was not permitted to travel with the first-team), she flew out to Los Angeles to join her former England youth team coach Tracey Kevins and play for the semi-professional USL W-League side LA Strikers during the summer. Copeland Smith worked closely with Daly and for the next two summers, Daly spent her summers training in California.
“He was so crucial to my game,” Daly says. “It was repetition of things I wasn’t good at, which was quite hard for me at that point. Mentally I was really tough on myself. If I had a bad game, it’d break me for ages. He knocked that out of me. He’d be like, we’re doing this for an hour, an hour of you being uncomfortable.
“We used to watch a lot of video, work on movements that’ll give me half a yard, separation touches, using my left foot. I worked on that exact finish with him, because I used to play quite a bit on the right wing for Houston, so I found myself in that position a lot. But I’d end up trying to cross it, and Dave was like, you can get a finish off it. He’s got a video clip of me almost recreating that exact same goal.”
Daly’s time in Houston was also crucial to establishing her physical skillset, from her strength on and off the ball to her pace to run in behind defenders, as her 29th goal scored for the Dash, setting a new club record, demonstrated.
“Over here, there’s a lot more technical, tactical emphasis and that’s the biggest difference to the NWSL and WSL; it was so transitional,” says Daly.
“I had to learn a lot in America in terms of physicality,” Daly says. “How would my strength work? What would work for me? So it wasn’t just a generic gym programme. It was more specific to being a striker. How are you going to hold players off? Are you going to run it behind? Are you going to use your body on the move or pin up players?
“I went (to America) as a little fat kid and came out being like a beast.”
Learning to be a left-back
“Honestly, I don’t even know,” Daly says when asked when, precisely, she was dubbed a left-back.
Daly begins doing the mental calculus, trawling back through the timeline of her brain.
“So I played for Leeds at the start as a striker, all the way through my youth I was a striker. I went into the first team, fwas on the wing for a bit, then I signed for Lincoln and I think, they moved me to left-back.
“I can’t remember why. I’m not even left-footed, so I’m not sure where that came from.”
But Daly played left-back and, in 2012, was told there was no entry point to the England senior national team in that position.
The news led Daly to the United States and St. John’s, despite the enforced redshirt ineligibility (Daly had spent more than two years out of education) of her freshman year and many, including her family, fearing the distance would see her forgotten by English scouts.
Daly was called up to an England training camp in December 2013 but her debut did not arrive until June 2016, with then-England coach Mark Sampson deploying Daly alongside striker Ellen White. As was becoming her wont, Daly scored on her debut, adding the third in a 7-0 rout of Serbia.
But the goal failed to open the gates for the England striker position. In fact, six years and a record-40 goals later for the Dash, Daly spent the entire 2022 summer plying her trade at left-back as England lifted their first-ever major trophy.
“Sarina (Wiegman) always used to say, because of my athleticism, that’s why I was good at left-back,” says Daly.
Daly was more than adept at the position, from her defensive awareness and defending crosses, as shown in the above two images from England’s Euro 2022 final victory against Germany.
But her ability to catalyse attacks was where she was arguably most valued by England manager Sarina Wiegman. As the images show below, after Germany lose possession following an intervention in England’s final third by centre-back Millie Bright, Daly immediately steps out of the backline to join the attack.
She strides into midfield, where she receives the ball and continues to drive forward, before threading a perfectly-weighted pass into the path of Fran Kirby.
The ostensible ease of her play can belie the challenge.
“I kind of forgot left-back, if I’m honest, when I played in Houston,” Daly says.
“I was there for so long playing as a striker or on the wing. It was hard. I remember going into England camps and for days leading up to the game, I’d do extra training and analysis, getting into the motion of being a defender again.
“It’s very different when you’re playing central to out wide. You’ve got to force somebody to the touchline, you got to keep them there. Positioning was quite hard to adjust to because being a striker, you’re almost asleep for quite a lot of the game, waiting for that one moment. When you’re in the back line, you have to be 100 per cent switched on at all times.
“Don’t get me wrong. There’s been games where I’ve had my pants pulled down, Spain being one of them.
“I found myself wanting to attack more, but because I’d attack more, I’d leave myself more vulnerable at the back. But I found as well I’d want to give the strikers the balls that I’d want. So you kind of reverse engineer them.
“If I was playing up front, what I’d want from a full-back, I tried to give to my strikers. That helped me.
“But it definitely wasn’t easy transitioning from both positions every time, because you go club to country, to club to country, exposed at the highest level as well against that world-class wingers. It wasn’t easy.”
Two Goals, February 19, 2023, England 2-1 Italy (Arnold Clark Cup)
After claiming the Golden Boot with Villa in the 2022-23 season, Daly earned a rare opportunity to lead England’s line against Italy in the 2023 Arnold Clark Cup, scoring two classic centre-forward headers in the 2-1 victory.
“That’s the thing, I actually put a lot more pressure on myself being a striker for England because I never really got the opportunity to do it much,” she says.
During the World Cup that summer, Daly returned to the side as a left-back and left wing-back, starting the next six matches, including the final. When England were 1-0 down at half-time against Spain, Wiegman surprisingly took off both Russo and Daly, who might have fancied her chances of being switched up front. No — that was her tournament over, and Wiegman ended up turning to third-choice Bethany England and regular Plan B Bright.
Daly’s final goal for England arrived the following spring when she scored the fifth in a 5-1 win against Italy.
“That was a hard goal to score because I was going to hit it before the defender came, but I thought, ‘Nah, I’m going to take it round her’,” she says. “I could hear her (coming behind me). I was like, if I pass this in now and she blocks it, I’m going to be fuming. So I thought, take the extra touch and go round her, which also is quite scary because there’s another defender recovering.
“But pouncing on a loose pass is a big part of my game. I like to think that I can read the game quite well. I really enjoyed that goal as well.”
Did she expect it to be her last?
“Not for England, but I knew it was going to be one of my last appearances for England.”
Two Goals and pressing, September 18, 2022, Aston Villa 4-3 Manchester City
“This is a worldie. Come watch this.”
Daly is summoning a member of Villa’s media team over to The Athletic’s laptop to watch her first goal for Villa. The goal is typical Daly — a debut goal, a chance pounced on but the finish exquisite and deft.
It represents a seminal milestone for countless reasons. For one, Villa had never managed to score against City before in the WSL.
“I was also at a place in my life where I’d just lost my dad,” Daly says. “I moved home from America. The odds were stacked against me to come out and have a really good season because obviously everyone in England knew me as a left-back.
“The reason I came to Aston Villa was because (former head coach) Carla (Ward) was like, ‘You’re a striker, you’re going to play striker for me’. She really sold it to me. I took that leap of faith.
“A lot of people doubted that I was going to go on and have the season I did.
“I didn’t think I was going to have that kind of season, but it spurred me on to be like, ‘Look, I’m going to prove you all wrong’. That being my opening goal… it was the same thing for the Dash against Chicago. You get that feeling where you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be fine here’.”
The performance showcased many of Daly’s strengths. Her pressing won the ball back high in City’s half, leading to Alisha Lehmann’s opener. Daly’s second showcased her strength to hold the ball up, her pace to run in behind and her intelligence to not only stay onside but be in the right place to stab home from City goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck’s spillage.
“I was the highest player and naturally you want to find your target player. I knew those two defenders were quite close to me. We don’t really have any numbers going forward, I have to hold it a little bit, wait for the rest of my team to join in.
“I linked up really well with Kenza (Dali) that season. I was always waiting for her to join in with me. Then it’s head down running, you’ve just got to make the box.
“The hardest bit about that was staying onside. I had to curve back to get back onside because I’ve made the run full tilt. But I knew I needed to be there if the pass was squared across or if (Roebuck) parried it.
“I loved that game. But my first goal was better than that one. It’s probably my favourite Villa goal.”
Again, it’s not the ilk of goal many associate with Daly.
“If you ask Natalia (Arroyo, Villa head coach), she thinks I can only head the ball,” Daly laughs. She gets it. “I’ve scored a lot of goals in my head, so a lot of wide players will always cross the ball if I’m in the box.”
Goal, April 28, 2023, Villa 2-3 Manchester United
Daly isn’t denigrating the art of the header, and if anyone has been able to expose the finer finesse underlying what can be discredited as blunt-force style goalscoring, it’s Daly.
One of Daly’s favourite goals is precisely this.
“I remember Mary (Earps) being like, ‘F— off, Rach’,” Daly laughs of the goal, which saw her sprint across the box to meet Lucy Staniforth’s corner, flicking her head just right to loop the ball into the furthest corner of Earps’ goal. “You’ve got to give it to me. It’s very good. It’s also my low sock season.”
Goal, September 30, 2024, Villa 2-2 Tottenham Hotspur
Arguably one Daly’s finest headers, she elected to spin in the air as she met Lucy Parker’s deep cross into the left-side of the box to lift the ball over Spurs’ goalkeeper and into the back of the net.
The spin was aesthetically pleasing but more pragmatic than stylistic.
“With a cross — maybe I shouldn’t open myself up here because now people are going to know that — but I prefer a cross from the right,” says Daly. “I feel like I’m stronger going that way to goal. I thought the pass wasn’t coming at pace, I’ve got to redirect this. If I’m running it this way, I can’t really redirect it back that way. So I had to turn and flick it that way.
“Again it’s the way I’ve read the game. I knew I was going to have to do something to spin it back toward goal.”
Trawl back through Daly’s headers and there is a theme: most come from a right-side delivery, Daly motioning or shouting for her team-mate to put the ball on her head. The rest of which she’ll take care.
Of course, Daly is more than headed goals. Some of her left-footed shots, including her swivelling left-footed volley that clinched a last-gap 3-2 victory over West Ham United on November 19, 2023, showcase the ambidexterity she has used to stalk 18-yard boxes to help Villa over the line.
“I love that goal,” Daly coos. “My dad used to make me do a lot with my left-foot as a kid because he was like, you can’t just be one-footed. You need to open yourself up. That’s one big quality of my game is that I can use both feet. I practise both a lot. Still to this day, I use both quite a lot. Today I even said to our assistant coach, I think I’m better with my left than my right foot.
“It’s comforting knowing that if a ball drops to my left, I don’t need to shift it to my right. I’m always going to take it on my left.”
The goal also carried a twinge of what Daly believes is actually a quintessential Daly Goal, something not boiled down to a mere body part but that carries with it a bite, spirit. “Something scrappy,” she says.
Such as the goal that sealed her the 2022-23 Golden Boot award.
Goal, May 27, 2023, Villa 2-0 Arsenal
“Do you hear what they’re chanting?” Daly asks. The Athletic restarts the clip of her 22nd WSL goal for Villa on the final day of the season. Yes, clear as day. “You can stick your Golden Boot up your a—“, just as Villa are set to taking the corner. (Click here to watch the goal in the U.S.)
“I think Bunny Shaw had scored, so I was level and the Arsenal fans got wind,” she says. “So they were chanting that.”
Daly leans back in her chair. “Then I broke the record and got the Golden Boot.”
Daly is smiling as the clip plays again, showing the goalmouth scramble that ensues following Arsenal goalkeeper Sabrina D’Angelo’s failure to claim the initial delivery. There is chaos in the box, where Daly so often thrives.
“I love that goal. That’s typical me,” she says. “In the huddle, as we’re celebrating, everyone was singing, ‘You can shove your Golden Boot up your a—‘. I remember Ruesha Littlejohn shouting it at me.”
She pauses. “Wow, it’s quite nostalgic watching these back.”
Does she ever go back and watch clips?
“I used to. When I first signed for Villa, I’d watch them just to remind myself that I’m actually good at football. But I don’t do it now.”
This season has been more difficult, of course. Daly has scored just three goals in 14 matches, a brace against Liverpool at the start of the season and a header (run onto a right-sided set-piece delivery) against Brighton in January.
There are mitigating circumstances. Daly underwent a medical procedure following the Brighton match and did not return until May. Under head coach Arroyo, appointed last January, Daly has not featured at centre-forward, with Kirsty Hanson instead deployed in the position (Hanson has scored 11 goals this season) with Daly operating behind Hanson and even deeper in midfield to help catalyse attacks.
The result has been a staggering decrease in Daly’s open play touches in the 18-yard-box.
It’s unfamiliar territory for Daly, who has never scored less than five goals in a season since joining the Dash in 2016.
A final match of the season against London City Lionesses awaits on Saturday.
“It’s hard because I’m always going to do a job for the team,” she says. “I’ll always go wherever I’m needed. But I know where my strengths lie, and I think they predominantly lie up front. But I’m not getting any younger, and Kirstie’s had the season of her life.
“So I don’t mind playing deeper. I like being a bit behind the striker, but here’s a lot of defending that goes into that as well. There’s a lot of work that goes in there, so I’m not always in the positions higher up that I want to be in, rather.
“I think I’ve only played up front three games, and scored three goals. Not a bad ratio, is it?”
With a a year remaining on her current Villa contract, extended in 2025, Daly intends to keep playing, despite others from her England class, including her podcast partner Bright, electing to step away.
“I’m only done when I’m done, you know?” Daly says. “With England, I knew it was the right time to finish. But I feel great. My body’s great. I’d never be a player that just happily goes, ‘Yeah, let me sit on the bench and watch you lot do it and make a living’. I’m too competitive for that. I’m too passionate for that.”
Daly pauses, remembering her polymath oath.
“Equally, I’ll do whatever I need to do, what the team needs and what the manager needs from me.
“But it’s definitely not a come in, make a cup of tea, have a cigar and watch the girls work hard. I want to still keep pushing on. I still think there’s levels that I can reach.”