Have you heard the old wives’ tale that if two football teams face each other in four consecutive matches, their fates swap the next season, Freaky Friday style?
That seems to be what has happened to Manchester City and Chelsea, whose domestic seasons a year ago were defined by a four-game series in March of 2025. Chelsea may have won three of those matches, but it’s City who is now looking like the stronger side a year later. Indeed, the teams are trending in opposite directions entirely.
City is finally finding the success that the individual talent on its roster has long suggested it could. Manager Andrée Jeglertz arrived in the summer and has figured out how to make a cohesive group out of the team’s array of super talents, which includes the likes of Bunny Shaw, Vivianne Miedema, Yui Hasegawa, Kerstin Casparij, and Kerolin. City sits atop the WSL table a little over halfway through the season, six points ahead of second-place Chelsea and 10 points clear of third-place Arsenal with 10 games left to go.
Chelsea, then, faces an uphill battle as it seeks to extend its WSL winning streak to seven years. The Blues have made a habit of winning just about everything in domestic competition—in the last 10 years, they’ve got eight league titles, five FA Cups, and four League Cups. (The desperately coveted Champions League trophy, however, remains elusive.) But in Sonia Bompastor’s second season at the helm, they’ve dropped key points to lesser clubs like Everton, Liverpool, and West Ham, and even when they’ve won, it’s been by smaller margins than in their previous dominant seasons. The faltering results are no fluke. Their play has been clunky, as if the team is content to coast on its big names and the inertia of its legacy of success.
Wednesday’s clash was set to be a pulse check for the two biggest contenders of the year. The occasion was the semifinal of the Subway Women’s League Cup, a tournament with teams from the top two tiers in England, sponsored by the home of the Five Dollar Footlong. What the match lacked in relative stakes—much like its energy drink–sponsored spear-side counterpart, the hoagie trophy isn’t exactly the most prestigious prize in the game—it made up for in psychological weight. If success in England necessarily runs through Chelsea, this was City’s big chance to show that they could reroute it to Manchester this year.
Heading into the match, Bompastor’s plan seemed to be: Sandy Baltimore, Hannah Hampton, the goalposts, and a dream—and by that I mean everyone else asleep, dreaming. City won the midfield battle easily; even their basic passing sequences were impressive next to Chelsea’s fumbling play. In tight areas, Chelsea went after balls with the speed and agility that I waddle with when I’m trying not to slip on a snowy sidewalk. The Chelsea that showed up in this game pales in comparison to silky-smooth Barcelona, their Champions League nemeses; how they plan to bring home that exalted trophy this season is a mystery. It frankly looked like Chelsea was the team that should have signed Sam Coffey instead of their opponents in lighter blue.
In spite of this City-slanted run of play, when the breakthrough opportunity came, it was Chelsea that got on the end of it. In the 41st minute, Baltimore sent a recycled corner kick into the box and Wieke Kaptein rose up to head it home. Baltimore was Chelsea’s biggest source of forward momentum all game, at least until Lauren James replaced Sam Kerr, but the fact that the team’s full back was its most lethal weapon should tell you all you need to know about Chelsea’s play.
Outside of the goal, it was all City. Lauren Hemp, Miedema, and Casparij all caused trouble, with the latter two each dinging a shot off the post. Shaw was easily the most threatening player on the field, regularly forcing multiple Chelsea defenders to pitch in together to try to subdue her advances.
Even high-flying American stars Naomi Girma and Alyssa Thompson, whose respective transfers from the San Diego Wave and Angel City to Chelsea in 2025 raised eyebrows on our side of the pond about the NWSL’s place in the global soccer ecosystem, couldn’t overcome their team’s malaise. (The third American at Chelsea, Catarina Macario, was left off the team sheet entirely amidst rumors of a stateside move.) Jade Rose contained Thompson capably—even the former track star couldn’t overcome exhaustion as she and fellow forward Kerr did more running out of possession than in. Girma was key to keeping Shaw off the scoresheet, but that task was so big that she didn’t have much left over to participate with the ball.
Ultimately, the 1-0 win was a triumph for Chelsea, but the team’s performance offers little hope for a regular season comeback, especially with City in the form they’re in. (Though the memories of the Citizens' collapse from an even stronger position two seasons ago should keep City from resting too much on its laurels.) The squads will face each other again in less than two weeks, this time for all-important league points, and it’s Chelsea, not City, that will have to rethink their strategy heading into that fixture.
As the game wound down, Fran Kirby, former Chelsea longtimer who’s spending the sunset of her playing career at Brighton and in the commentator’s box, reflected on her old team’s play. “This is what Chelsea do,” she said. “This is what Chelsea is about. It’s about not playing well. It’s about grafting, it’s about getting the goals when opportunities come about.” This is what Chelsea is about. It’s about not playing well. Bompastor’s squad is certainly testing that theory.
