Willie Kirk Returns to English Football as Durham's New Head Coach
Willie Kirk is back in English football. Two years after Leicester City sacked him for breaching the club’s code of conduct, the 48-year-old has been named head coach of Women’s Championship side Durham.
The announcement marks his first job in the English game since March 2024, when Leicester dismissed him following an internal investigation that found he had been in a physical relationship with a player. The club ruled that the relationship broke their code of conduct, a decision that ended his spell in charge of their Women’s Super League side.
Durham’s statement confirming his appointment did not reference his Leicester exit or the circumstances around it. The club has yet to publicly address why it believes Kirk is the right figure to lead them now, or how it has assessed any safeguarding implications. BBC Sport has contacted Durham, the Football Association and the Professional Footballers’ Association for comment.
Player-coach relationships are not illegal under UK law, provided no minors are involved. The debate around them, though, has grown louder in women’s football. Critics argue that such relationships can create a serious power imbalance inside a squad, blurring professional boundaries and leaving young players vulnerable.
Those concerns have filtered right to the top of the game. England head coach Sarina Wiegman has previously called relationships between players and staff “very inappropriate” and “not healthy”, a stance that has come to frame much of the modern discussion around conduct in the women’s game.
Safeguarding has become a formal pillar of the domestic structure. Codes of conduct for players and managers are a condition of clubs receiving a WSL licence, and every club must appoint a safeguarding officer. Those rules are designed to set clear expectations and provide channels for players to raise concerns.
Kirk’s return will now sit squarely in that wider conversation: a proven coach stepping back into a high-profile role, carrying with him a dismissal that the sport is still working out how to handle.
