Girma and Walsh can be Chelsea’s key cogs in pursuit of European glory | OneFootball

Have Chelsea built a team capable of winning the Champions League? The short answer is yes. The longer context is that their burning desire for European glory is no secret. It was the only trophy missing from their cabinet under Emma Hayes. The 2020-21 finalists have spent years focusing on what they believed it would take to bridge a gap to Lyon caused primarily by the gap in investment. Now, with the French club hunted down by Barcelona, who have won the Champions League three times in the past four years, the focus has expanded.

How to do it, though? In the 2020-21 final Chelsea were swept aside, conceding four times in 36 minutes to a Barcelona team fuelled by the pain of a not dissimilar defeat by Lyon two seasons before in their first final. Hayes’s team did not follow a similar path, though. After their first final the gap seemed to get bigger, an anomaly season when they failed to escape the group stage in its introductory year being followed by back-to-back semi-final exits at the hands of Barça.

Those two 2-1 aggregate defeats were tighter than the 4-0 drubbing in the final, when silly and unfortunate mistakes proved costly. But even last season, when a stunning 1-0 win was secured at Barcelona before the team were undone at home, a gap was visible. Chelsea had to be perfect and labour hard to earn their slender lead against a side that looked frustrated but a little stuck in first gear.

It was similar in Chelsea’s recent 1-0 defeat of Arsenal in the WSL. The margin was narrow, but Chelsea made their opponents work extremely hard, without overexerting themselves, and looked in control for most of the game.

The exit of the beloved but fatigued Hayes and arrival of Sonia Bompastor, a Champions League winner as a player and a manager with Lyon, has re-energised the club and players. However, if Chelsea win a first Champions League or a quadruple, domestic treble, or finish unbeaten that alone would not be the reason.

Importantly, there is purpose to the way Chelsea are operating behind the scenes. Despite Hayes’s departure, taking several staff members with her to the United States, the core senior staff remain. The hugely respected head of women’s football, Paul Green, who joined Hayes at the club in 2013, is the cog that connects the football and business sides. The executive manager, Adrian Jacobs, is another long-established figure who knows the women’s game and its development inside out. The Chelsea board member Barbara Charone is taking a keen interest in the women’s side and the club hired a dedicated chief executive, Aki Mandhar, in September 2024.

When the centre-back Kadeisha Buchanan and defensive midfielder Sophie Ingle ruptured their ACLs in the first half of the season, the strategy wasn’t to make do, recruit placeholders or bring in a player on loan but to use it as an opportunity to invest in the future. Naomi Girma arrived from San Diego Wave, a player her international manager, Hayes, has described as “the best defender I’ve ever seen”, and Keira Walsh, England’s irreplaceable midfield anchor and arguably one of the world’s best in the position, joined her.

Both players had been linked with Arsenal among others, but the difference is that Chelsea have no problem raising the financial bar to another level, even if it inflates the market, if it means they move closer to that ultimate European goal and complete domestic dominance. These are not kneejerk signings either. Walsh’s deal may have gone down to the wire but Chelsea’s scouting and targeting of players is years deep.

Recruitment at Chelsea has become more ambitious of late and there has been a focus on strengthening squad depth. Make a best starting XI and you are left with enough players in every position to make a second Chelsea XI strong enough to win the league. Separately, those XIs might not be able to sustain challenges in all competitions but combined they are a mighty force. Only the young talent closest to contributing meaningfully is kept in house, academy graduates regularly sent on loan for minutes they can no longer be afforded at a club where there are senior internationals battling in every position.

Keeping such a stacked squad happy must be a challenge, but when you’re finishing the season with multiple medals round the neck, being part of the whole is much more palatable. So, do they have what it takes? Absolutely. Will they win a first European title? Football would be boring if it was that predictable.

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