“Sonia and I had a chat about this,” says Lucy Bronze. “She said to me: ‘What do you think is missing at Chelsea?’ And I was like: ‘Nothing, they’ve got everything.’ Sonia replied: ‘I know, I thought that as well.’”
Few are more qualified in assessing Chelsea’s Champions League aspirations than the five-time winner Bronze, who knows Chelsea’s manager, Sonia Bompastor, and her assistant, Camille Abily, from her time with Lyon.
“This club has more things at their disposal than a lot of the teams I’ve played for,” Bronze says. “I always get asked: ‘How does it compare to Lyon and Barcelona?’ I loved my time at both those clubs, and the players and talent at those clubs was unbelievable, but they didn’t necessarily have all those resources in place to back the team, whereas Chelsea have all the resources and the talent there.”
As Chelsea ready themselves for their opening Champions League group game, a showstopper against Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday night, is Bronze right? Are Chelsea good enough to become the first English team since Arsenal in 2007 to taste European glory and can Bompastor be the difference?
“Yeah, I would say so,” says the defender Nathalie Björn, who joined Chelsea in January. “I would say that winning the Champions League both as a player and as a coach is unbelievable. She really knows what it takes both from an individual perspective but also from the team perspective. I think she can really fill that gap that we’ve been missing.”
The ingredients are there, Chelsea’s squad looking deeper than ever. It is not significantly bigger but there is an enormous amount of experience in almost every player. Part of that preparatory work was done by Emma Hayes, whowas willing to sacrifice success for the sake of leaving the squad in a strong place. Getting more minutes into players such as Aggie Beever-Jones, Maika Hamano, Hannah Hampton and Lauren James mattered more than trophies. Chelsea have also welcomed back players injured at different times last season, such as Catarina Macario, Mayra Ramírez and Millie Bright. Mia Fishel and Sam Kerr are at different stages of the recovery journey from anterior cruciate ligament injuries but should add firepower as the season progresses.
Bompastor comes with a laser focus and style that she knows can win. She knows what a winning squad should look and feel like in the Champions League, and how they should play. That gives her huge authority in her own environment and across Europe.
“She’s very clear on how she wants to play football,” says Björn. “She’s very passionate about it. She’s an honest coach who puts demands on you, but she also wants you to be brave on the ball, and that’s a hard balance, but I think she manages that balance quite well. She puts demands on you, but still gives you the room to make mistakes and learn from that.”
There is stability, too, in the general manager, Paul Green, who understands Chelsea and how the team and wider club work. The conditions across Europe are also ripe for change. The European champions, Barcelona, have a new manager in their former assistant Pere Romeu, after Jonatan Giráldez left for Washington Spirit. Joe Montemurro replaced Bompastor at the eight-time Champions League winners Lyon. Fabrice Abriel has taken the reins at Paris Saint-Germain, with Jocelyn Prêcheur going to London City Lionesses. Disruption is not likely but it is possible.
There has been a commotion about the decision by the body that runs the WSL to postpone Chelsea’s game last Sunday against Manchester United. Much of that has focused on the domestic advantage it gives Bompastor’s side over Arsenal, who played last Sunday, feature in the Champions League on Wednesday and meet Chelsea in the league on Saturday. But Bompastor says that, despite the extra rest, there are issues for Chelsea too.
“We were in a very, very good team dynamic, and not having the opportunity to play each weekend changes everything in terms of preparation for the game on Tuesday against Real Madrid … We have been out of competition for 10 days, which is completely different. So, if you look at the situation, the decision is not good. And I think it’s not good for all the English clubs who are in the Champions League.”
If there is a barrier to Chelsea winning that competition, it could lie in the WSL’s decision not to schedule fixtures kindly around European ties as other leagues do.
