How Bompastor took over from Hayes and made Chelsea unbeatable in WSL | Tom Garry | OneFootball

This was a title win that has felt inevitable since December, at which point Chelsea had won their first nine Women’s Super League matches of the season. In truth, it had felt likely long before that, in a campaign where one squad has looked uncatchable and – unbeaten with just two more games to go – they may yet prove to be the 2024-25 invincibles.

It is Chelsea’s sixth WSL title in a row and eighth overall in terms of full-length campaigns, in addition to their triumph in the one-off, transitional “Spring Series” in 2017, meaning they have been crowned champions of England nine times since their first title in 2015. That represents more than just an era of dominance. They have built a dynasty and there are no signs to suggest their reign will be over anytime soon.

If anybody thought this club might falter after the departure of their long-serving, trophy-hogging manager Emma Hayes, they were quickly proved wrong, as her replacement, Sonia Bompastor, set about her work calmly, intelligently and thoughtfully.

Even before a ball was kicked, there were tell-tale signs that Chelsea were intending to kick on, perhaps most significantly, on a midsummer’s day, when the news broke that they were in talks to sign Lucy Bronze. As transfers go, there are very few stronger signals of intent than adding a five-time Champions League winner to your ranks and yet, in January, they put down an even bigger marker by breaking the women’s world transfer record to sign Naomi Girma. Other additions have strengthened the squad too, not least Sandy Baltimore, who has thrived on the opposite flank to Bronze at full-back.

Nonetheless, picking their standout individuals who have led the way is not necessarily easy; this season they do not have a player in the top four in the race for the Golden Boot, although both Aggie-Beever-Jones and Guro Reiten are joint-fifth with eight goals each. Not dissimilarly, no Chelsea player has more than four WSL assists this term – Johanna Rytting Kaneryd is their best-performer in that regard, and she is not among the division’s top-nine assist providers this season.

Instead, this has been a title earned by a team, or rather, by a squad, of hard-workers; of experienced winners and leaders. Big characters such as Erin Cuthbert, who has arguably had her best season in the WSL, and Millie Bright, who has successfully challenged more than 80% of attempts to dribble past her, the highest percentage of any player in the league this term. Domestically, Bright’s centre-back partnership with Nathalie Björn has proved solid.

After the title had been won with 1-0 win at Manchester United, Bompastor was asked about her side’s emphasis on being a “team” rather than having one standout superstar. “That [narrative] is something that frustrates me a lot,” she said, “because when I was the Lyon manager, it was the same, we were never talking about one individual but more about the team, which is something great for me, because I worked a lot on the dynamic and cohesion in the team and making sure that the team is more important than the individuals.”

She added: “When we have that, people don’t realise the quality and talent of the individual players. It frustrates me a little bit because when you are able to achieve what this team achieved this season, you need to recognise, the best players are probably here.”

Nonetheless, the strength in depth Bompastor can call upon is surely the greatest asset the club has. They have scored more than a third of their league goals this season in the final 15 minutes of games, demonstrating the strength on their bench. And they have won this title despite long-term injuries to key players such as Sam Kerr, Sophie Ingle and Kadeisha Buchanan. Other teams have injuries too but cannot replace them with the same calibre of world-class players that Chelsea can.

Is this a vintage Chelsea team? Well, they are not the division’s top goal-scorers (that’s Arsenal), nor do they have the best defensive record (that’s Manchester United) They do not lead the way in terms of possession nor pass completion (that’s Manchester City), but Chelsea have done the double over all three of them in the league, coming out on top in all six of the head-to-head games against their nearest title rivals, and that is why they have won the league. They have delivered in the highest-pressure WSL games.

They have also been fun to watch. They have had vastly more touches inside their opponents’ penalty area than anybody else in the division, and they like to run with the ball at their feet, carrying possession into the area more frequently than anybody else too. That is largely thanks to Rytting Kaneryd, who leads the way in the division for the number of times players have successfully carried the ball more than 30 yards upfield. More than that, there is a real intelligence to their off-the-ball work; they have intercepted possession more times than any other team this term. They work tirelessly off the ball – never better exemplified than in the second half of their title-defining comeback win over Manchester City at the Etihad when their hunger, intensity and work rate looked off the charts.

Fittingly, they will have woken up on Thursday morning as champions while also reaching a landmark of a full year unbeaten in the league, having not lost a WSL game since a dramatic 4-3 defeat at Liverpool on 1 May 2024. When will Bompastor lose a league fixture? It will happen, eventually, but there could be a long wait. The former Lyon coach is, perhaps, the single-most important factor of all, filling the shoes of the most successful manager in WSL history and, rather than being daunted, taking the task in her stride.

Many players saw Hayes as a motherly figure, but she could also be fiercely demanding, intense and loved to swear, as evidenced by a behind-the-scenes documentary, filmed between 2019 and 2021. Bompastor has provided fresh ideas, new words of wisdom and given an already-successful team new challenges in training. That was precisely what Hayes herself had hoped for. Chelsea have found somebody just as driven as Hayes, to continue their winning machine.

Asked where her drive comes from, during an interview in March while discussing her Uefa Pro Licence course, Bompastor said: “My childhood. I started to realise I really, really wanted to play football when I was really young, because my dad was a referee and my oldest brother was a player. In my childhood I wanted to play with him so I was always making sure I went outside with him and played with him and his friends – which he was really annoyed about because I was the only girl and the other boys didn’t have their sisters with them.

“But I was so proud to be part of that and be with him. I think this competitiveness came from that, because my brother was better than me in any sport we played. He is four years older than me. So, when we were playing football, table tennis, tennis, or whatever, he was always better, and when he was winning it was difficult for me to accept.”

For now, everyone else in the WSL has to accept that Chelsea remain on top. Can they be stopped next year? Not if Bompastor gets her way.

Header image: [Photograph: Harriet Lander/Chelsea FC/Getty Images]