Heading into Tuesday’s Champions League quarterfinal clash with defending winners Arsenal, Chelsea had reason enough to hope. As much as the Blues have struggled in the Women’s Super League this year, each new match is a blank slate, and, as proven by Arsenal themselves last spring, it’s very possible to do well in the Champions League while losing out on the WSL title.
The first fifteen minutes of the game at Emirates, which was the first of two legs, suggested that that hope may not be for naught. The momentum was squarely in The Blues’ favor, most exemplified when Alyssa Thompson and Lauren James each had shots hit the far post. But sometimes in football, there are halves, games, and seasons when the bounces tend to fall the other way. Those early shots turned out to be the best of the half for Chelsea, and shots don’t count for anything at all on the scoresheet.
It only took Arsenal getting shaken into focus — being saved by the post twice in the span of a couple minutes will do that to a team — for the match to change entirely. Once Renée Slegers’ side got their bearings, the match went from a cascade of Chelsea attacks, mostly running through a Herculean Thompson, to a back-and-forth battle, and Arsenal has, well, an arsenal of players who can sink a dagger at any moment.
That’s exactly what Stina Blackstenius did in the 22nd minute when she headed in a free kick from Katie McCabe, who had spent the better part of the match thus far getting schooled by Thompson. The Swede had scored the only goal in the Champions League final in 2025, and here she was again, coming up huge for the Gunners.
At that point, the momentum was Arsenal’s, and it would become even more so ten minutes later when English superstar Chloe Kelly created absolute magic. She received the ball in a totally innocuous place, well above the ‘18, and took an audacious shot that would have looked silly had it not gone in. To have the vision and confidence to take that shot says a lot about Kelly as a player, and a lot about Arsenal as being a team that has, as they say, the juice.
Despite Thompson’s best efforts, Chelsea couldn’t manage to get one back before halftime. Not even the officiating was going Chelsea’s way — both the referee and the ensuing VAR review made an absurdly soft call that disallowed what should have been a good goal. Sonia Bompastor’s side would have an uphill battle.
James managed Chelsea’s first shot on target a couple minutes into the second half, but the momentum remained Arsenal’s. The few times Chelsea did have the ball in Arsenal’s final third, Arsenal’s defense looked organized and gritty. Perhaps that’s why James decided to take things into her own hands. In the 66th minute, James collected the ball well beyond the box after a Chelsea corner had been cleared. Why would Chelsea’s best striker be waiting around behind almost every player on the pitch? The answer quickly became clear:
It’s the kind of trick shot YouTube bros make videos out of, pouring in dozens of attempts for just one good take. But James did it in a Champions League quarterfinal, against the defending champions, and with the indifference of a master — just another day at the office. With that curling beauty, James had given her team the golden chance to keep at it and make things easier on themselves in the second leg.
But Chelsea hasn’t had the juice all year, and that ultimately didn’t change on Tuesday. With the exception of individual efforts by Thompson and of course James, the match was all Arsenal. So when the brilliant Alessia Russo hammered in yet another screamer, it didn’t feel undeserved.
Even though next week’s second leg will take place at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge, Arsenal heads into the fixture with a tremendous advantage in both score and energy. Chelsea has always floundered in the Champions League, even while dominating domestically. Now, they don’t even have the latter, and it’s unlikely they’ll be able to climb the mountain on the former.
Bompastor will desperately hope for the miraculous, however. The second-year Chelsea manager was just handed a multi-year contract extension, which is pretty perplexing considering the team’s poor play and player exodus in recent months. Fan sentiment doesn’t often shift the tides on personnel decisions, but dropping out of the Champions League at the earliest stage in four years might prove to be too much for the club leadership’s faith in the Frenchwoman.
Where matches between teams that play each other often and matches in tournament knock-out rounds tend to be cagey, this match was anything but, and we had multiple delicious goals to marvel at. So next Wednesday, enjoy the high-stakes clash, and be grateful you’re not Sonia Bompastor.
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