The North Carolina Courage have hired Mak Lind as their new head coach, the team announced Saturday. The 37-year-old is now the third head coach to take charge in the team’s nine-year history.
“I felt like this option was a good fit for me,” Lind told The Athletic ahead of the announcement. “I believe in this project a lot. You don’t move four kids and a wife if you don’t fully believe in what’s happening in the future here.”
The Swedish coach joins the NWSL club after leaving BK Häcken at the end of 2025. A former player with Häcken’s men’s team from 2009 and 2014, Lind became the women’s head coach in July 2023.
Across three seasons as head coach in Gothenburg, Sweden, Lind recorded two consecutive second place finishes before winning his first Damallsvenskan league title in 2025 with a 21-1-4 record and 86 goals scored. Lind and Häcken also went to the quarterfinals of the 2023-24 UEFA Women’s Champions League, where they were eliminated by Paris Saint-Germain.
Lind says his proudest moment leading Häcken was not the day he lifted his first Damallsvenskan trophy, but instead the response from his players after losing the first two matches of the 2025 season. Häcken had lost just twice in the season before, 2024.
“That was a shock for everybody, not only for the players and the staff. It was also a shock for the people around the club, because of the season before that,” Lind said.
“The way the team bounced back and the way I, as a leader, handled it. I don’t believe in doing a journey only one way, forward and up. You have to always be able to handle setbacks. And, as a leader, believe in what you’re doing and continue to do that. So I would say that was the proudest moment.”
Before joining North Carolina, Mak Lind led BK Hacken in Sweden. (Rene Nijhuis / Getty Images)
The Courage have been without a head coach since Sean Nahas was dismissed in August 2025, when the club was sitting ninth in the National Women’s Soccer League standings. Just after the midseason break, the team cited “confounding performance issues, culture issues” as the reasons behind the firing.
Assistant coach Nathan Thackeray was the interim manager for the final 12 matches of the 2025 season. Under Thackeray, the team secured a record of 4-4-4 and finished ninth, one point off the playoffs and behind eventual champions NJ/NY Gotham FC.
In January, Thackeray left the Courage to become the head coach of the Gainbridge Super League team Dallas Trinity. Thackeray had spent 10 years coaching for the North Carolina ownership across different roles for the organization’s women’s team and the men’s team, North Carolina FC.
Lind was first approached by the Courage in September 2025 and says he went through seven steps during the extensive application process. “They had a big process going on, and they were really serious about how they handled it,” he said.
Lind becomes the first head coaching hire under the Courage’s Chief Soccer Officer, Ceri Bowley, who was hired in April 2025.
“Our search was comprehensive and global in scope, and we are confident Mak is the right person to lead our technical efforts and help return this club to the championship standard it is built upon,” said Bowley.
Mak Lind is the first full-time head coach of the Courage in its nine-year history. (North Carolina Courage)
Lind says that he had been approached by teams outside of Sweden over the past two seasons, but a move had never materialized for various reasons. There was something about the people at the Courage, as well as the team’s more intimate size and structure, that appealed to him.
“There are clubs in this league that maybe have a bigger stadium, maybe more people at the games. In Europe, there are pretty big clubs. I believe that if you’re doing a journey, you have to do it with people that you can trust and people you want to align with on how to do things,” he said. “The connection with the people in the club was the key, and that’s how they convinced me to come.”
Lind will be tasked with maintaining the distinct possession-based soccer identity that already exists at the Courage, while also evolving the team’s principles of play. But the bullish Swede was adamant that he is ready for the challenge.
“My identity as a coach today is possession-based, but not only keeping the ball because it looks good. I believe possession is one important key, but you can’t just keep the ball in possession and play sideways,” said Lind.
“I can almost say that I’m obsessed with scoring goals. Everything I do in my identity is like, how do we score goals? Even if it’s ridiculous. Even if we defend a corner, it’s like, ‘OK, how do we transition and score?’”
The 2025-2026 offseason has been a major reset for the Courage. Stalwart center back Kaleigh Kurtz, who had played every minute of the last four NWSL seasons for the Courage, left for Denver Summit as a free agent. Then, in January, the team transferred out their club captain and longest-tenured player, Denise O’Sullivan, to Liverpool for an undisclosed transfer fee.
Success in 2026 could hinge on how Lind gets the best out of 2025 NWSL MVP finalist Manaka Matsukubo. Last season, the 21-year-old Japanese international scored 11 goals and notched four assists, which ranked second in the league for goal contributions. Lind must also establish a new central defensive partnership and shore up the spine of the team.
Lind arrived in North Carolina this week and will immediately get to work leading the Courage through preseason. His first taste of NWSL action will come on March 14, when the Courage opens the new season at home against Racing Louisville.