They say that good things come for those who wait.
Patience and perseverance are two principles of Sonia Bompastor values after having taken the time to learn the art of coaching in Lyon's Academy System before graduating from the first team, and ultimately accept a carefully selected opportunity to manage the ladies' super league.
But none of them was needed during her first year that was in charge of Chelsea. This season was an exhibition of inevitability of the ruling champions. A memory of anyone who suggested that their crown could slip after the end of the Emma Hayes era that the established hierarchy is no less immobile.
It happened again. The blues have a different collector item for the trophy cabinet and this is special. Bompastor ended the track earlier than even the Grote Hayes in its last four title -winning campaigns – the earliest has decided a competition since 2018/19 – and did this unbeaten (W19, D3).
Very little of this season has been Nip and Tuck. That way it felt different, maybe even surprising.
Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City have been knocking on the door for a while and slowly but surely praised it until Bompastor arrived to break the record WSL points in total (60), almost as a reprimand.
Earlier campaigns certainly gave the idea that Chelsea could be dethroned for much longer. Hayes herself gave the title famous after he was lost late in her last season in Liverpool: “I don't think the title is more,” she said, before she darkened Manchester City with goal difference. It felt in common, but that is Showbizz.
Chelsea doesn't care who they are trampling on their way to silverware, as long as they arrive there. Pure, ruthless desire is a constant, re -conceived over the years but always present. It is the hand that feeds this title -winning machine over and over again.
Yet no one predicted that such an unyielding approach would transfer to Bompastor's Chelsea so quickly. How could they? People spoke about a period of transition. A kind of recess. Some between the time the French woman, who has never coached abroad before, gets to her environment and the team that she inherited is introduced to their new leader.
Bompastor quickly crushed that pretension.
This is simply inexorable Chelsea 2.0, more patiently in possession, but still able to resign in the same exhaustive way that each Hayes team did. A unit in which each part exactly performs its role. Finding something interesting in even the most prose sketch is the specialty of Bompastor.
But this, their six -fold, is just as impressive as problematic for the WSL and his attempt to stay competitive. How do rivals become challengers again? Arsenal fell at the last obstacle in 2021/22. Man Utd suffered the same fate and Man City recently the following year. The cycle of domestic dominance – Europe remains frustrating out of reach – defects.
Strange, then that very few Chelsea players have been on its own leaders this season. No best-in-class artists of the best show in the city-Hoe can that be? It seems strange that most of the highest -performing individuals of eighth of the WSL play for other clubs.
There are a few from bijters, but this newest title was not about excellent solo acts – such as when the unparalleled Fran Kirby led the show in 2020/21 or when Sam Kerr took 20 goals on the way to the Golden Boot in 2021/22. Or when the Maverick quality of Lauren James led last year's conquest.
The story of this season has been much more nuanced. Finding the exceptional one in the unusual is something that only Chelsea is capable of.
Lucy Bronze and Sjoeke Nusken are the only two players who are prominent in one of the categories used to measure defensive firmness. They rank second and third for interceptions behind Ash Neville from Tottenham. No Chelsea player is mentioned in the top five for tackles, approvals, possessions won or blocked shots.
Offensing has Chelsea's top scorer Aggie Beever-Jones nine goals (a solid return) and ranks her joints behind Shekiera Martinez (10, West Ham), Elisabeth Terland (10, Man Utd), Alessia Russo (12, Man Cital).
Beever-Jones is placed in the same way for shots on Doel (19), while Joint-Golden Boot has posted winner Russo, in the beginning, 31.
Winger Johanna Rytting Kanyd has been really striking in terms of all -round contribution and improved immeasurably under Bompastor, but her individual figures do not count with those of Mariona Caldentey or Katie McCabe at, for example, Arsenal.
The Gunners duo dominates almost all creative categories, including opportunities, shot-creating actions, progressive passes, balls in the box and end-of-the-touch touches. In the meantime, most ownership statistics are owned by Man City players.
These figures will of course feel completely unimportant when wearing a WSL winner medal, except to emphasize an important theme. With Superstar Striker Kerr who brought the season offside with an ACL injury and James who manage only six competition starters, Chelsea had to rely on collective smarter and sharper. Involve a pack mentality.
Some versions and results are indeed excited, but their power was most sharp in the unique power of the team, as the team with the best cumulative talent pool across the board – depth beyond the wildest imagination of other WSL sides. Replacements for substitutes. Solutions for every problem.
At the end of March, Sky Sports spoke after he was back to defeat Man City of two goals in the Champions League, Bompastor said: “I told my players, you will have different statuses.
'Sometimes you start the game. Sometimes you will not be in the team. Sometimes you will be a finisher. And whatever status you have, you are here to help the team. It's about the club, the team and what we achieve together. “
Very few WSL managers have a fraction of that luxury neither the bullishness to use every centimeter of it. Bompastor, a newly founded invincible, has pressed and shaped her team, poking with every imperfection and demanded more. A historic treble is very up.
And so here we have the largest women's football team ever, already in the field of virtually inviolable, with the potential and means to become even bigger.
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