Sonia Bompastor: Chelsea’s new WSL Champion?

With Sonia Bompastor replacing Emma Hayes in the dugout, can Chelsea fend off their rivals to win a sixth straight Women’s Super League crown?

The 2024-25 Women’s Super League season will have fans excited at the prospect of new managers right across the league.

Four of the 12 clubs involved will have new bosses in the dugout when the campaign begins on Friday.

Arguably the most intriguing of those newcomers is Sonia Bompastor, who will be following on from the Emma Hayes dynasty and trying to create her own era of success at Chelsea.

In the last decade, Chelsea found a winning formula that brought silverware galore. Hayes won 15 trophies during her 12 years as manager, cementing the club’s dominance of the domestic competitions in England. 

That haul included a last-gasp push for the WSL title last season, as the Blues pipped Manchester City to the post.

Opta’s supercomputer is backing Chelsea for the title, but Bompastor certainly has big shoes to fill.

The Recipe for Success

Replicating the success of Hayes would be no mean feat for Bompastor. However, she has won one trophy – as a player and as a manager – that Chelsea weren’t able to under Hayes: the Champions League.

The former France international is no stranger to pressure and expectations having played for and managed the most successful team in the history of the Women’s Champions League.

She captained Lyon to victory in 2011 and 2012, then became the first woman to win the competition as both a player and a manager. 

Bompastor’s list of honours as a player is significant. She won eight Division 1 Féminine league titles, six with Lyon and two with Montpellier, also winning the Coupe de France four times and the Champions League twice.

As a manager, she won three league titles and one Coupe de France in charge of Lyon. She has the mindset of a serial winner and, after Hayes, Chelsea could hope for nothing less in a new boss. 

Bompastor won exactly 100 of her 118 games in charge of Lyon, registering an 84.8% win percentage and, incredibly, losing only eight times.

Her Lyon team scored 381 goals, an average of 3.2 per match, while conceding only 71 (0.6 per game). Bompastor’s numbers speak for themselves and are the reason Chelsea made her the number one candidate to replace Hayes and oversee what they hope will be the start of another era of success.

A New Champion?

The WSL is a notoriously tough hunting ground for new coaches. No manager in the competition’s history has ever won the WSL in their first season; there have also only ever been five winners of the competition.

Bompastor’s predecessor Hayes won seven, Laura Harvey and Matt Beard have two titles apiece, while Nick Cushing and Joe Montemurro lifted the trophy once each.

It means we have an interesting quirk in the new season, with Liverpool boss Beard being the only active manager to have won the WSL title among all the current bosses.

But Bompastor will still face stiff competition, as her main rivals in Jonas Eidevall, Marc Skinner and Gareth Taylor have all taken Hayes to the wire in recent seasons as the league continues its explosion of expansion, growth and increased competitiveness.

Bompastor came so close to securing a second Champions League medal (as a manager) last season. Her Lyon side ultimately fell just short when they faced a formidable Barcelona team, who secured their own slice of history by winning the quadruple, when they became the first team to do so since Arsenal in 2007.

But Bompastor’s track record of navigating such a competition and her win-at-all-costs mentality could bring a new chapter of glory for Chelsea as they continue to seek European success.

Bompastor’s Blues

The new Chelsea boss has been left with solid foundations as she aims to win the WSL at the first time of asking. Bompastor is taking over a team that scored 71 goals in the WSL last term, 10 more than any other team, while only Man City (15) conceded fewer goals than the Blues (18).

Chelsea accumulated 59.9 expected goals (xG), the most in the league and over four more than next-best Arsenal (55.5). That means they massively outperformed in relation to their xG, so, not only were they the most effective at creating high-value chances, they were incredibly clinical.

Further to that, Chelsea also had the best shot conversion rate in the WSL last season, despite losing leading scorer and 2023 player of the year Sam Kerr to an ACL injury at their winter training camp in January.

Before her injury last season, Kerr was averaging 0.61 goals and 3.7 shots per 90, ranking in the top 10 for both (minimum 300 minutes played).

But Kerr’s goals per 90 was actually at its lowest since the 2019-20 season, while her xG per 90 (0.46) was the lowest it had ever been while at Chelsea.

Getting Kerr fit and firing will be Bombastor’s task – the Australian is still a world-class operator on her day, as she showed by hitting double figures in each of the three seasons prior to 2023-24. Kerr has committed her future to the club, signing a new contract until 2026. 

Chelsea had 429 shots in the WSL, the second-highest total after Arsenal (436), and averaged 0.14 xG per shot, a higher total than any team in the division. Lauren James was the joint second-highest scorer in the WSL last season, with 13 goals; the England international greatly outperformed her 6.1 xG, showing high-level finishing and demonstrating clear improvement in that area of her game. 

Mayra Ramírez had a fine Olympics with Colombia and starred in Chelsea’s huge win over Manchester United on the final day of last season. She scored three goals in seven WSL games last term following her record-breaking switch from Spain. In her first full season in England, her speed, strength and deadly finishing could prove too much for defences across the WSL. 

Defensively, the Blues were also pretty solid last term, though their expected goals against (xGA) figure of 20.4 was bettered by Arsenal (18.6) and Man City (19.9), both of whom also faced fewer shots (176 and 184, respectively) than the Blues. Millie Bright was missing for most of the season, however, and she really could be like a new signing this term.

Bompastor has looked to the transfer market to help Chelsea reach that next level. Lucy Bronze, who’s won every domestic trophy there is to win in France, Spain and England, has joined after leaving Barcelona. She’s won the Champions League five times, lifting the trophy in spells with both Lyon and Barca.

Bronze created 28 chances for Barcelona last season from full-back – only four defenders in the whole division managed more. Bronze also supplied four assists, and her experience both offensively and defensively could be one of the missing links for European success.

The Best of the Rest

While Champions League glory is obviously the dream outcome for Chelsea, you have to consider what constitutes success for the new manager. And how grand are the expectations from the club and fans alike? With Man City and Arsenal both adding significant summer signings to their squads, this may be the fiercest title race we have ever seen in the WSL. 

City ran the Blues so close last term, with Hayes’ team winning it on goal difference on the final day. Taylor has not left anything to chance, with City signing the WSL’s all-time leading goalscorer in Vivianne Miedema, who left Arsenal in the summer. 

It’s not just goals that Miedema brings – she is also a creative force, having laid on 35 assists in the WSL, which ranks behind only Beth Mead (45) and Katie McCabe (36).

With golden boot winner Khadija Shaw, as well as Lauren Hemp, Chloe Kelly and Mary Fowler in their ranks, there seems to be little danger of City losing out on goal difference again.

Arsenal stayed in the race for as long as they could but their attack ultimately let them down. While they have let arguably one of the best players of all time leave their ranks, they have brought in some big names themselves in the hope they can challenge their London rivals once more.

Quality signings have come in at both ends of the pitch. Mariona Caldentey (signed from Barcelona), Daphne van Domselaar (from Aston Villa) and Rosa Kafaji (from BK Hacken) – the latter a youngster tipped as the next big superstar of the women’s game – have all arrived.

But only time will tell if any of these sides can beat Bompastor’s charges to glory.

We could be about to witness the new era of a new champion in west London, especially if she can clinch that elusive Champions League title that Chelsea long for.

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