Thanks to some serendipitous scheduling, Manchester City and Chelsea are three-quarters of the way through a four-game series that started on March 15 with the League Cup final. It will end this Thursday, with the second leg of a Champions League quarterfinal tie. So far, this is a series that's shown us the best of what the WSL has to offer.
It takes high-quality players and high stakes to turn a quirk of the schedule into a season-defining series, and this one has loads of both. For Chelsea, the WSL's undisputed hegemon, these games presented an opportunity not only to continue their pursuit of a multi-trophy season, but to put Manchester City back in its place. Chelsea has failed to win the WSL title just once in the last eight seasons, but were pushed to the brink by City last season, which ended with Chelsea claiming their fifth consecutive title, but only on goal difference. For City, these four games brought with them the opportunity to salvage what is a season gone awry. City currently sits fourth in the WSL table, having regressed so far from last season's heights that they are 15 points behind Chelsea at the top of the table and seven points out of the Champions League places. And yet, 12 straight days spent as Chelsea's biggest obstacle to completing the treble left plenty to play for.
Chelsea claimed the series' first prize, winning the League Cup final 2-1 thanks to a late own goal by Yui Hasegawa. City played well, though, and carried the confidence that came from their performance into the Champions League matchup four days later. Here is where the quality of both teams made itself apparent. City spent the majority of the game on top, out-running and out-pressing Chelsea to the point that Vivianne Miedema's opening goal in the 60th minute felt like inevitability arriving. Everything flipped after the opener, and Chelsea spent the next 20 minutes or so prying open City's defense and creating chances, only to have the game fully slip away from them in the 88th minute when Kerolin served up another chance for Miedema, who didn't miss. It was Chelsea's first loss all season.
Through the first half of Sunday's league match, it looked like City was going to achieve something no other team in England has proven itself capable of, which is outplaying Chelsea in multiple halves. The first 45 minutes were once again dominated by Hasegawa's technical prowess and Kerolin's speed. City kept absorbing Chelsea's attacks and then releasing Kerolin down the flank after winning the ball back, which repeatedly left her sprinting into 1-on-1 duels with an overmatched Millie Bright. The last of these, in which Bright (and the rest of Chelsea's defenders) just kept retreating and retreating and retreating until Kerolin found herself idly fiddling with the ball in Chelsea's box, resulted in a ball poked into the corner of the goal.
There are certain stretches of time in which certain teams, the ones that eventually earn the right to call themselves not just champions but sovereigns of their territory, have to show who they really are. Chelsea, having come up short in one of those moments on Wednesday and facing a 1-0 deficit on Sunday, were in danger of losing not just two games in a row, but their air of invulnerability. It is those circumstances that imbued what came next with so much meaning: Chelsea more or less erased City from the field in the second half. They solved the Kerolin problem by channeling their own attacks down the right hand side instead of the left, thus allowing left back Niamh Charles to focus on stymying the Brazilian. From there, Lauren James and Aggie Beever-Jones and the rest of Chelsea's attackers got to work. It was Beever-Jones who finished a flowing move down the right side to equalize in the 49th minute, and for the rest of the second half the pressure on City's defense just kept building. It was eventually released by the kind of goal that champions always seem to find: a darting header from substitute midfielder Erin Cuthbert in stoppage time.
Chelsea was hit, and has now hit back, and Thursday will bring another opportunity for them to show what kind of champion they want to be remembered as. For as much as Chelsea has dominated the WSL, the Champions League title has remained elusive. They will need to climb out of a 2-0 hole in order to have the opportunity to finish this season as something different than what they've always been: titans of England but also-rans of Europe. Manchester City, meanwhile, can boil its entire season down to Thursday's game. The disaster that is the league table can now be put behind them; the only way to get something out of 2025 is to stay alive and send Chelsea home. Thursday's going to kick ass.
