Beever-Jones breaks Liverpool hearts to send Chelsea into Women’s FA Cup final | OneFootball

Chelsea kept their hopes of completing the quadruple alive after beating Liverpool in dramatic fashion to reach the Women’s FA Cup final. A 94th-minute header from Aggie Beever-Jones broke the visitors’ hearts after Olivia Smith had given them an early lead.

It has been a week to remember for the Chelsea academy graduate Beever-Jones. After scoring her first goal for England against Belgium, the 21-year-old once again seized her opportunity to send her team to Wembley.

“Aggie is a talented young player,” Sonia Bompastor said. “She makes a big impact for the team, creating opportunities, but also scoring goals and giving assists. I was really pleased for her to get minutes with the national team because she’s in a good moment in her career.

“She had the opportunity to score her first goal also with the national team, which is important for her. This goal today will bring her even more confidence.”

Until Beever-Jones sent home the winner, it had been a frustrating afternoon for the Blues against a resilient Liverpool. The Chelsea manager was full of praise for the patience her side showed in coming from behind.

“It was a dramatic game with lots of emotions,” she said. “We got that goal against us. We knew something like that could happen because we thought that Liverpool were trying to catch us in transition. But we just stuck to our principles.”

It was never going to be easy for either side as domestic football returned from the international break. Neither Chelsea or Liverpool had come out unscathed from their players’ overseas exploits over the past fortnight with Lauren James and Ceri Holland picking up worrying injuries with England and Wales respectively. In better news for their managers, Wieke Kaptein had shaken off a knock to start for Chelsea while Smith made a welcome addition, returning to Liverpool’s attack after recovering from a hip problem.

It would have been understandable if Liverpool had looked slightly low in confidence after suffering back-to-back defeats, but the visitors produced a competent and mature first-half performance that, for the most part, kept Chelsea at bay.

They seemed content to sit back early on, maintaining a compact shape as Chelsea came at them with relentless energy. The hosts’ control of the ball, however, failed to translate into clearcut chances as Liverpool defended the wide areas with aptitude.

Their patience paid off as they took advantage with a sweeping move from back to front that gave them a surprise lead. Marie Höbinger’s defence-splitting pass found Smith, who had the beating of Sandy Baltimore and Millie Bright before accurately firing home. The jubilant scenes in the away end said it all; Leanne Kiernan briefly disappearing over the barriers in the celebrations.

It was a goal that sparked a newfound confidence within Liverpool and Höbinger subsequently stung the palms of Hannah Hampton.

Just as it looked like they were heading to half-time with a valuable lead, however, Chelsea levelled the score out of nothing. When Mayra Ramírez found Erin Cuthbert in the box, the midfielder produced an instinctive looping effort that rebounded in off the post, despite Rachael Laws getting fingertips to the ball.

It was a spark that lit a fuse under the Blues who dominated after the break. The Liverpool defence creaked, but for the most part held up under the strain despite efforts from Ramírez, Cuthbert and Beever-Jones.

With extra time looming, Chelsea dug deep and once again found a way to win, as they have done on so many occasions this season. Relentless pressure on the Liverpool area led to the visitors retreating deeper and deeper and their resilience finally broke. Beever-Jones found the winner, a soaring header to power Baltimore’s delivery past Laws.

Chelsea will return to Wembley on 18 May, seeking to lift the FA Cup for a sixth time.

“I didn’t want to talk a lot about it before the game because it’s a bit of a superstition, but I am really happy,” Bompastor said. “This stadium means a lot in the football world. I had the opportunity to play there at the Olympics in 2012, but for the entire club, it’s a huge opportunity to play [there] … Sometimes it only happens once in your life, so you need to be really happy about that.”

Header image: [Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images]