Lucy Bronze wants 6th UWCL after Chelsea move
Credit to Author: Emily Keogh| Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 16:34:32 EST
Lucy Bronze shares her motivations for joining Chelsea after winning the women’s Champions League at Barcelona. (1:03)
England defender Lucy Bronze has said that she wants to win the Champions League with new club Chelsea and that the move to the west London club was the “perfect fit” after joining the Women’s Super League (WSL) champions last month.
The 32-year-old right-back’s transfer to Chelsea on a two-year deal marks one of the club’s most high-profile moves so far as they enter a transitional phase, with former Lyon manager Sonia Bompastor taking the helm after Emma Hayes’ departure.
Bronze, one of the most decorated players in women’s football, has lifted the Champions League trophy five times and told ESPN that she is ready for a new challenge.
“I finished the season at Barça, I knew that I was ready to leave there, and I was looking for another new challenge,” Bronze told ESPN in an exclusive interview on Monday.
“I spoke to Sonia and Cami [Camille Abily, assistant coach] literally at the end of the Champions League final, and they were like: ‘Well, why don’t you come to Chelsea?’ I thought, you know, why not?
“I knew that they [Bompastor and the coaching team] wanted me to come here. I felt like that was a good decision coming back to England, coming back to the best team in England, a team that I can add to both on and off the pitch, a team that’s already set up in such a good way. It just seemed like the perfect fit.”
Bronze played alongside assistant coach Abily while at Lyon from 2017-2020 while Bompastor was a coach with the academy team. The former France internationals played a large part in enticing Bronze to come back to the WSL, with Bronze adding that the pair “made a huge difference to the decision and just made the transition really easy.”
Bronze had previous stints in the WSL with Sunderland, Everton, Liverpool, and Manchester City and won everything domestically in England. In 2017, she joined Lyon, where she won the Champions League three times. Following the Lionesses 2022 Euros triumph, she joined Barcelona, where she won the continental title another two times.
Bronze admitted that wanting to win the Champions League with a third club was “a big part” of her decision to move to Chelsea. She has won every final of the competition she has played in, and would become the second female player to win the silverware with three clubs, behind Josephine Henning.
“Having played in the Champions League final and won it this year, it was like, this is the feeling that I love the most in club football domestically. There’s nothing bigger. I want to be part of that again, but also a new challenge,” she said.
“I’m so proud of my achievements and the achievements of the England team, how we changed women’s football by winning the Euros. I think the next step is making the league bigger and better every year, but I think that is the step that’s missing as an English team to not only get to the final like Chelsea has previously, but go and win it. That’s in this new kind of history of women’s football. We really need a club to do that.
“Having played against Chelsea, it’s the team that’s most prepared to do that. We just need that little bit of push to get over the line, get the finals regularly and win the trophy.”
Bronze was part of the Barcelona side that knocked Chelsea out of the Champions League last season and during the 2022-23 season. Chelsea fell short against the Catalans during the semifinals, with Barça going on to lift the trophy both times.
The defender has been with the club for one week so far and will be part of Chelsea’s squad heading to the U.S. for a preseason tour, featuring fixtures against Gotham FC in New Jersey and Arsenal in Washington DC as the team prepares for the upcoming 2024-25 season, aiming to go for their sixth consecutive WSL title.
With 123 caps for England, she will also likely be part of Sarina Wiegman’s Lionesses set to face the USWNT, the Olympic Gold Medalists, at a friendly at Wembley Stadium in November.