Kerr was up against the outstanding Maya Le Tissier but the United defender was left licking her wounds Sam Kerr waits. Maya Le Tissier waits. There is a throw-in to be taken and a Chelsea player down injured on the turf and everyone else is just sort of milling about trying to look busy. Le Tissier puts a hand on Kerr’s shoulder to let her know she’s there. Kerr shuffles her feet and feints both ways to let Le Tissier know she could disappear at any moment. But mostly, they wait.And when you think about it, waiting is perhaps the defining sensation of this job. Waiting on the back row of the bus before it leaves. Waiting for the team...
Manager has built a durable, controlled side over a decade and it was telling in the victory against Manchester CityChelsea are not a sentimental team by nature. Nor are they a team who appear overly preoccupied by questions of style and process. They can play football from the stars and football from the gutter – often in the same game, occasionally even in the same move. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly or unappealing side to watch. But nor, by the same token, do they crave approval in the slightest.What does this mean in practice? If you are Jess Carter, it means that, when Lauren Hemp starts running at you with 80 minutes played in...
Forest come close to a Cup upset, Steven Gerrard tells Bukayo Saka to toughen up and Leicester’s crisis looks to be overLiverpool may have been under full strength but even in defeat it was a test emphatically passed by Steve Cooper’s burgeoning Nottingham Forest side. The hosts displayed impressive defensive discipline and shape to keep Liverpool out for 78 minutes, and arguably should have had a penalty soon after conceding. They almost certainly would have been awarded a spot-kick had Ryan Yates altered his direction slightly and aimed to draw more significant contact from Alisson, the kind of trick pulled so often by Premier League forwards for the benefit of the video assistant referee. The VAR decision to rule Diogo...
Women’s game deserves greater investment than the men’s, but instead the pay gap is getting widerWhen Chelsea’s Sam Kerr raced clear of Steph Catley in the FA Cup final on Sunday before delightfully dinking the ball over the Arsenal goalkeeper, Manuela Zinsberger, it was football at its finest – men’s or women’s. To add some context to her impressively relentless performance Kerr had flown to Australia, played twice against the US, the world champions, recovered from a stomach bug, landed back in the UK on Thursday and took part in one training session before the final. Continue reading...
Fifty years since the first Women’s FA Cup final, Emma Hayes’s Chelsea showed the domestic game is in rude healthA satisfying sense of symmetry surrounded a Women’s FA Cup final which, in some ways, seemed almost as much about the past as a reassuringly vibrant present.One hundred years to the day since the Football Association banned women from playing football on grounds belonging to affiliated men’s clubs on the basis that the game was “quite unsuitable for females”, Chelsea – and Fran Kirby and Sam Kerr in particular – thoroughly undid Arsenal in a final postponed from last season. Continue reading...