Sonia Bompastor looks to Europe after Chelsea complete domestic treble
Despite completing the treble without losing a domestic game in her first season managing in England, the Chelsea head coach, Sonia Bompastor, was still not fully satisfied as she set her sights on adding a first European title to club's the honours list.
Bompastor's team, who were 3-0 winners against Manchester United at Wembley to finish their 30-match home campaign unbeaten, were outclassed by Barcelona in the Women's Champions League semi‑finals in April. They celebrated the club's sixth Women's FA Cup in 10 years on Sunday, but Bompastor said: 'We are super happy but we didn't win the Champions League, which was also one of our goals.
Related: Chelsea's dominance begins to erode the scale of their achievement | Jonathan Liew
'Some of the people there on the pitch were already mentioning 'we are missing the Champions League', so that's who we are, that's our goal. I want to make sure we are all able to achieve that goal, to win the Champions League with the club.
'Everyone is saying 'maybe Chelsea will run away from the pack' in the league in England, but our goal for us is to compete against the best teams in Europe, so it's nice to have this domestic treble but we want to make sure, in the future, and hopefully next season, we are able to compete against the best teams in Europe.'
Chelsea have now won 18 major women's trophies – all of which have come in a dominant spell since 2015 – and this year they have appeared further ahead domestically than ever, winning the title by their largest margin, 12 points.
Bompastor said: 'We want that competition, to produce our best. We want to make sure we're top of the league and bring everyone else with us – this is what we want to achieve – but we need the other teams to still invest and come with us.'
The gap in financial investment between Chelsea and United in terms of budgets was symbolised in the director's boxes as the champions were watched by the Chelsea co-owners Behdad Eghbali and Todd Boehly, whereas United's Sir Jim Ratcliffe was not present for the second season running. There was still a significant delegation of senior United figures – not least the chief executive, Omar Berrada, and the technical director, Jason Wilcox.
Related: Chelsea 3-0 Manchester United: Women's FA Cup final player ratings
Bompastor said: 'It's really enjoyable for us to see all the people from ownership were here, but even more important to feel they were really behind the team. It just shows as a woman, when you play in football, and the women's game, you are in the right club, and you really want to give that back on the pitch for all these people.'
Asked about Ratcliffe's non‑attendance the United head coach, Marc Skinner, said: 'I don't know why Jim wasn't here, but we were really well represented. Omar's up there, we've got the Glazer family in massive support, and Jason as well, so I know [you] are trying to find a story, but we've just lost a final.
'Those are the people I deal with every day. They need to see that [match] for us to be able to look at what we need to do to close a growing gap in finance, that Chelsea have.
'The reality is, it's the investment in the team that needs to happen, it's not whether you're visible. As long as our team is being invested in. We need to close that gap.'
Chelsea were also supported at Wembley by their new minority owner Alexis Ohanian, husband of Serena Williams, who bought a 10% stake in the women's club for £20m last week. At half‑time, the Reddit co‑founder told the BBC: 'These are the queens of global soccer and they've got the trophy case to prove it, so I feel so humbled.
'The sky's the limit and what I love about this club is, this club is unapologetically ambitious. This will be a billion-dollar franchise one day.'
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New York Times
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New York Times
an hour ago
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As I joined in the stands to film this video, there were hardly any fans with their phones out. Grown men and women hugging and crying. Amazing atmosphere. #CrystalPalace beautiful ⚽️#Wembley #FACup — Joao Castelo-Branco (@j_castelobranco) May 18, 2025 Following Palace's triumph at Wembley, there were similar scenes a few days later in Bilbao, where Tottenham Hotspur beat Manchester United to win the Europa League. A couple of months earlier, it was Newcastle United's turn after they defeated Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final. But it doesn't have to be a long wait for a trophy that tips people over the edge at a football match. Gary Pickles remembers being in the away end at Brighton in 2019, when Manchester City were on the verge of winning their fourth Premier League title in eight seasons, holding up his phone, filming the fans all around him, and suddenly being stopped in his tracks. 'I noticed my son, Niall, had his hands on his head and tears were streaming down his face. 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New York Times
an hour ago
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How the Premier League revolutionised academies to create pathways for Delap, Eze, Johnson and many more
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('Homegrown' is defined as any player who was at a club for three years before they are 21 and later played for the first team.) 'It's really, really positive. We've got over a third of the world's top 250 players playing in the Premier League — and the bar keeps getting higher each year,' he says. Over £2.5billion has been invested into academies now, benefiting from a four per cent levy 'that gets ring-fenced to specifically invest in youth development. As transfer fees have increased, that's created a really healthy fund'. Saunders brings up the summer of 2017 — the first green shoots of recovery following adoption of the EPPP. Three England age-group teams won tournaments in quick succession: the Under-17 and Under-20s World Cups, and the Under-19 Euros. Though what mattered to Saunders was not just those team triumphs but that Phil Foden (U17 World Cup), Mount (U19 Euros) and Dominic Solanke (U20 World Cup) were all voted player of the tournament. 'Our players as individuals were being recognised for their performances,' he says. 'Suddenly, there was a narrative shift. We now (in 2017) have some of the best young players, but they need the chance to break through. The ultimate aim of academies is to develop players that are ready to transition into the first team. It's not necessary to win age-group football.' Advertisement The real success was where England's senior men finished at the four major tournaments from World Cup 2018 to Euro 2024: semi-finalists, runners-up, quarter-finalists, runners-up again. Of Gareth Southgate's 26-man squad at the European Championship in Germany last summer, 19 had come through English academies following the EPPP's implementation. Six of those played at multiple academies — Eze, Declan Rice, Ivan Toney, Aaron Ramsdale, Dean Henderson and Joe Gomez — while, across the whole squad, half had been out on loan at least once and nine of them multiple times. A research paper published at the end of 2024, which the Netherlands' FA and its University of Groningen collaborated on, studied the pathways of 3,000 male and female Dutch footballers. They found '446 unique career development patterns,' with 'deselections' at international age-group teams (followed by reselections at higher ages) positively related to reaching the senior national side. Senior elite players actually had more atypical pathways than those who did not reach elite levels. 'Contrary to the widespread belief, elite players do not necessarily progress from early recruitment in a continuous, singular fashion,' the authors wrote. 'The typical pathway to future soccer success can be characterised as atypical (and) nonlinear (…) these findings highlight the need for fluid and flexible pathways.' Liam Delap is a perfect example. He spent a decade in Derby County's academy before joining Manchester City. There, he won an FA Youth Cup and league titles as both an under-18 and under-23 (twice). In 2020-21, he scored 24 times in 20 league starts under Enzo Marseca for the under-23s. It is a single-season Premier League 2 goals record which still stands. 'It was really special. I smashed it. It's nice to know that someone's not broken it,' says Delap at the Wembley event, ahead of collecting an award: Premier League academy graduate of the year (on-pitch achievements) for 2024-25. That City team is one of the best ever assembled at academy level, featuring current European top-five league players — and multiple senior or under-21 internationals — in Delap, Cole Palmer, Romeo Lavia, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, James McAtee, Morgan Rogers, James Trafford and Felix Nmecha. Advertisement 'It was so talented,' Delap says of that title-winning side. 'You never know at that age what everyone's going to go on to do, but it just showed how good we must have been because everyone's flying at the moment. 'They're all taking different paths but everyone's doing well.' Those paths are also converging slightly, with Delap reuniting with Palmer and Lavia this summer at Chelsea to be coached, at first-team level now, by Maresca again. He had been on the fringes of Pep Guardiola's first team in 2021-22 but Erling Haaland then arrived the next summer from Borussia Dortmund, so the 'pathway' to City's No 9 shirt was blocked. Championship loans with Stoke City, Preston North End and Hull City followed, before he made a permanent move to promoted Ipswich Town last summer. 'To have those different experiences with different managers and different playing styles is really important for someone so young. It's really helped me,' he says. Delap acclimatised quickly to the Premier League in his full-debut season (he had made two substitute appearances for City, totalling 47 minutes of game time). He scored 12 of relegation-bound Ipswich's 36 league goals, including two penalties, and earned a reputation for hard-hitting shots, a variety of finishes, and his physicality in duelling with defenders and ball-carrying over big distances. 'It's different, stepping up (to the Premier League),' he says. 'Everyone just gets stronger, more experienced and faster. You don't get as many chances, and there is the relentlessness of game after game, being on it, and the competitiveness is higher.' Delap is only the eighth Englishman aged 22 or younger to score 10+ goals in a Premier League season since 2018-19. He cites Harry Kane — now England men's captain and all-time top-scorer, who had four EFL loans in his teens before breaking through at Tottenham — as a role model; one he can now look forward to joining in the Champions League next season. 'The plan doesn't stand still,' says Saunders. 'You continue to evolve and improve. We've updated the EPPP so it continues to be fit for purpose going forward.' Some tweaks were small, such as changing Premier League 2 from an under-23s competition to under-21s, 'really to reflect the age group of players that were playing in it'. Advertisement 'We can move quite quickly from 'The data and the feedback suggest this is a good idea' (to) 'Let's move ahead and do it',' he says, citing the Premier League International Cup. This was introduced as a 16-team tournament (eight Premier League sides and eight from continental Europe) in 2014-15 but a decade later has doubled in size. The benefit is exposure, Saunders says: 'Making sure that those young players, the first time they step on a Premier League pitch and face a German, a Spanish or a French player, they've had the experience of that through the pathways.' The National League Cup was brought back last year for similar reasons. It is an equal split of Premier League 2 (under-21) and (fifth-tier) National League sides in a group-stage-then-knockouts format akin to the EFL Trophy, the latter a tournament in which the under-21 sides of some Category One clubs face first-teams from Leagues One and Two. There are two areas where Saunders accepts that more progress can be made. First, how clubs poach young talent from others, before players even turn professional, in cut-price deals, which he says will 'always be a challenge to manage'. Brexit has had an impact on that. Saunders says, 'Previously, our clubs used to be able to recruit players from Europe from age 16. We (the Premier League) and the clubs felt that was a really positive addition. Maybe one or two in every age group of the best players from France or Portugal helped to make the best of our young players even better. That has been taken away, so naturally clubs' recruitment pool has shrunk to look domestically.' Compensation rules were increased a few years ago based on club feedback — even if the money involved is still just a decimal percentage of some first-team transfer fees — and contingent payments are in place, too. These are clauses, Saunders explains, that mean 'if the player goes on to achieve certain milestones in the Premier League, or if he's sold on for a transfer fee in the future, a percentage of that money comes back to the club that developed him'. Advertisement The other area where progress can be made is in recruitment. The Athletic brings up the relative age effect, which is the overrepresentation of players born earlier in the (academic) year as scouts and coaches show bias or positively discriminate towards early developers — in England, that's those born from September to November (Q1) birthdays, rather than summer babies (Q4: June to August). Saunders rightly points out that it is 'something that exists across all sports — academics have spent a lot of time looking into that'. 'Our clubs have a bias to Q1, Q2 (December to February). That still feels like a big opportunity for us to widen the talent pool even further,' he says. In its 10-year report on the EPPP in 2022, the Premier League said 45 per cent of academy players were Q1-born, four times the number from Q4. The importance of this is that, at senior elite levels, there is an equal distribution of birth quartile (players born in all four quarters of the year are fairly evenly represented). That is because late developers catch up and those who stood out for early physical maturation sometimes lack top technical and tactical skills. For instance, Eze (June) and Garnacho (July) are Q4, and Mainoo (April) and Johnson (May) are Q3. 'We're working with clubs to better understand it, and it's complex, but at least acknowledging that the challenge exists (is a start) and then trying to find ways to mitigate that,' Saunders says. One way is biobanding, grouping players based on physical maturity rather than date of birth (known as chronological age). This is done using X-rays of the left hand and wrist to determine 'bone age' and thus physical maturation. That practice is slightly contentious — ie, the possibility that a pre-pubescent goalkeeper may not be recruited because of their predicted height — but is used on a good-faith principle because it is fundamentally part of the player-led approach. As Saunders says, it is about the 'long run' in player development. Advertisement The Premier League also has a battery of fitness tests that players, from under-12 up, complete each season. They have data to benchmark physical averages for each chronological age-group position — and how that differs for a Category 1 academy player compared to Category 3. 'Suddenly you put him (a late physical developer) in an environment with boys that are of a similar physical stature and coaches get a really different perspective,' Saunders explains. Saunders is passionate about the positive impact academies can — and mostly do — have on all players, rather than success or failure being based on whether they earn a professional contract or reach the Premier League. 'There's probably been an external perception that academies are great for those players that go through and play in the first teams, 'But what about the sacrifices that other boys make?' We've always promoted holistic development,' he says. He is particularly proud of how education has improved under the EPPP (an often-overlooked part of its off-field work). 'Young players are now achieving above the national average in GCSEs (exams UK schoolchildren sit around age 16), and we have more players going on to do A-levels than ever before. We're working with universities to provide scholarships,' he says. Tom Smith, a former Arsenal academy goalkeeper now at League Two club Colchester United, is a shining example of education balanced with a playing career. Now 23, Smith graduated last year with a first-class degree in economics and management from the London School of Economics. Scholar of the Year: Myles Lewis-Skelly Academy Graduate Award: Tom Smith The duo were recognised at the recent Premier League Youth Development Awards 🏆 — Arsenal Academy (@ArsenalAcademy) May 21, 2025 That achievement earned him the off-pitch Academy Graduate of the Year Award for 2024-25 at the Wembley event, recognition of his personal development. Speaking of being deselected by Arsenal two summers ago, Smith says, 'It came at the right time — I sort of knew it was coming.' It was certainly not the nadir many often assume it to be. 'The worst moment of my time at Arsenal?' he says. 'Knowing that I wasn't the smartest in the dressing room. Me and Bukayo (Saka, now a first-team star at the club and a full England international) used to have a competition on who was smarter. I remember sitting in the changing room when we all got our GCSE results at 16. We got (the) emails one by one, and he just beat me.' Advertisement Saka, too, has his own pathway, and is one of the poster boys for the EPPP and the academy system. Saunders points out that, in the Euros final against Spain last July, Saka was playing in a front four with Kane (the German Bundesliga's 2023-24 top scorer), Jude Bellingham (2023-24 player of the year in Spain's La Liga) and Phil Foden (who won the same honour in the Premier League that season): 'All of them have in common that they're English and they've come through our academy system — each of them taking ownership of their pathway.' Saunders and pathways. He is wonderfully relentless, and, just once, lets himself revel in 15 years of success in developing the next generation. 'There was a time,' he recalls, 'when people said, 'We're not tactically or technically at the level of our European counterparts', to the point now where we say, 'We've got so many amazing No 10s — how do we fit them into the national team?'' (Top photos: Brennan Johnson, left, and Liam Delap; Getty Images)
