It has been an open secret for months that Chelsea would appoint Sonia Bompastor as the new manager of their women’s team and, finally, that news has been announced officially. The Lyon head coach was offered the job in February but the parties agreed the move would only be made public once the 2023-24 season had concluded for both clubs.
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Even when asked about her future after Lyon’s Champions League final defeat by Barcelona on Saturday — her final game in charge of the French side — Bompastor said: “It’s not the right moment to talk about it. I’m really disappointed (with the result against Barca) and that’s the main thing. It’s not the question tonight.”
It was always going to be a long, drawn-out process, especially given Chelsea announced Emma Hayes’ departure seven months ago, on November 4. The Athletic reported shortly after that she was to take the U.S. women’s national team job.
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Her decision came as a shock to senior members at Chelsea, the team’s staff and players, and there was no succession plan in place for a manager who had been in the job since 2012.
Chelsea found themselves in an odd and rare position of having so much time to identify their first-choice candidate. They received several applications from managers wanting to replace Hayes but did not immediately start an official recruitment process.
Initially, those in charge of running the women’s team discussed around 20 people, listing who was and was not available. Names such as former Barcelona women’s team manager, and now Saudi Arabia women’s national team coach, Lluis Cortes and ex-Arsenal Women and Juventus women’s side head coach Joe Montemurro cropped up, but were quickly disregarded.
The club’s co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart led the search, with guidance from their women’s general manager Paul Green — a central figure in the process. The sporting directors set themselves a deadline of the end of January to know, internally, who their chosen successor to Hayes would be. One staff member — who, like other sources in this article, asked to remain anonymous to protect their position — described that approach as naive, as it made an unnecessary rod for their own backs.
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Winstanley, Stewart and Green met weekly and studied the profiles of potential coaches, acknowledging that Hayes, much like Aresne Wenger at Arsenal or Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United during their long reigns in the men’s game, actually performed multiple roles and had duties that went beyond the remit of most managers.
The rationale was not to make drastic changes to the Chelsea setup, instead leaning on existing foundations to minimise the impact of Hayes’ departure, but at that point, it was not known that she would go on to take five members of her coaching staff with her to the U.S. Bompastor’s assitant coaches Camille Abily and Theo Rivrin will be joining her from Lyon and Chelsea are interviewing to fill the other vacancies.
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The sporting directors initially consulted Hayes on the type of person who might be a good fit and recognised the need for some sort of handover between Hayes and her replacement, although that handover did not happen given the busy football calendar.
When asked on November 10, less than a week after the news of her departure broke, if she would have direct input into the identity of her successor, Hayes said: “I will be involved with those conversations… I will do everything I can to make sure there is as good a transition as possible so that my successor can have the same level of success I had.”
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Winstanley and Stewart also spoke to a handful of the squad’s senior players to get a sense of the most important qualities they wanted from an incoming manager. While there may be a natural preference for female coaches within the women’s game, that did not rule out a male coach from getting the job and Chelsea’s decision-makers did not make this a consideration during the process. The sense from the players was that appointing a winner was the most important thing.
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Given the dearth of female managers at the elite level of the game, there were not many obvious candidates. Chelsea wanted someone who would bring them success but also stability.
A proper shortlist was whittled down to single figures and Winstanley and Stewart began conducting interviews in December. Names went beyond the reported leading candidates of former England international and ex-Manchester United Women manager Casey Stoney, now in charge at San Diego Wave in the NWSL, the top division in the U.S. women’s game, Laura Harvey, a fellow Brit now in a second spell managing NWSL side Seattle Reign, and Icelandic coach Elisabet Gunnarsdottir, who stepped down in November after 15 years managing Sweden’s Kristianstads.
Speculation increased around Harvey when she was seen at Chelsea’s Champions League game against Swedish side Hacken in mid-December. However, the 44-year-old also took in an Arsenal game, and was in the UK to attend Reign player Jess Fishlock’s wedding. “It is always nice to feel like you are wanted, but my home is in Seattle right now,” said Harvey at the time. As for Stoney, 42, she signed a new three-year extension with San Diego in late January.
Chelsea settled on a four-person shortlist. At the beginning of February, Hayes was asked whether former Chelsea men’s player and manager Frank Lampard would be a good fit for the job — a view put forward by former England international turned pundit Izzy Christiansen.
“How can I have an opinion about who’s going to replace me?” replied Hayes. “I have yet to get involved in the debate around who my successor should be. I’m telling you truthfully I don’t want anything to do with it.”
Chelsea later clarified Hayes was involved in the succession plan and approved the move to appoint Bompastor, but the final decision was always going to be made by the club.
And that decision came to be an easy one.
Bompastor impressed so much during her interview — “blowing other candidates out of the water”, according to one club source — that Chelsea ruled out anyone else. They were attracted by her experience of winning on the European stage (taking Lyon to two of the past three Champions League finals, including a 3-1 victory over Barcelona two years ago), dealing with pressure at the highest level, handling of big-name players and their view of her as a competitor at heart. What really came across to Chelsea was her desire to win trophies in a different country with a more challenging league, as well as her traits as a hard-working and humble manager.
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In February, The Athletic reported Chelsea had made the head coach an offer, that she was their preferred candidate and that they were negotiating a deal to appoint her.
Bompastor still had a year left on her contract, but that was not the stumbling block it might have been: Lyon have been under new leadership since Michele Kang, who also owns NWSL side Washington Spirit, bought in this time last year. Multiple sources say Kang had wanted a different coach ever since her arrival.
Bompastor’s promotion from running the women’s academy at Lyon to head coach after the sacking of Jean-Luc Vasseur in April 2021 was a decision made by the club’s then-president Jean-Michel Aulas. According to one source, at the end of last year, Aulas, now vice-president of the French Football Federation, had asked Bompastor about taking over from France women’s national team manager Herve Renard, who will leave the job after this summer’s Olympics on home soil, but she declined.
In the meantime, Green was handling transfers and player recruitment planning at Chelsea and their scouting process remained unchanged.
Given the women’s team have a long-term strategy, most decisions regarding incoming and outgoing players are made some time in advance. Bompastor may have one or two requests herself for this summer’s transfer window and will have a say on any big future signings but she is not thought to have had much input on discussions about incomings and outgoings over recent months.
Bompastor’s work permit was approved some time ago but there was still no announcement. In April, UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported a deal had been reached between Chelsea and Bompastor, a development Lyon said was false. “With the club, we denied this information,” said Bompastor, speaking on April 12, before a domestic league game against Saint-Etienne. “In football, whether for players or coaches, it goes very quickly in one way or another.”
The news also came as a surprise to some within Chelsea. The Athletic had also been told a deal had been agreed between the manager and Chelsea but not the two clubs, so not everything had been finalised.
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It was all a question of timing and there was a desire to control leaks.
So long as either Chelsea or Lyon were still in the Champions League, there would be no confirmation. It was mutually agreed any announcement would be made after the season concluded. Sources from both clubs also suspected Lyon wanted to secure their next manager before announcing Bompastor’s departure but the search continues for her replacement, with Kang said to have been unimpressed by the candidates.
Chelsea see Bompastor as a leader in her field and view her appointment as a real coup.
Their women’s team, however, have never experienced such change and uncertainty, having had Hayes as their leader for 12 years.
This is the start of a new era.
(Top photo: Julian Finney — UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)