WSL Briefing: Chelsea vs Manchester United postponement leaves WPLL looking foolish

This Women’s Super League weekend threatened to be far more interesting than it was.

Chelsea demolished Crystal Palace 7-0 on Friday night before Manchester City and Arsenal held onto their 1-0 wins against Brighton & Hove Albion and Leicester City. Most of the excitement stemmed from a 2-2 draw between Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur that saw three goals in the final 18 minutes.

However, as the weekend’s fixtures reached their conclusion, the news cycle was already being overtaken by a story about next weekend. At 4pm on Sunday, the Women’s Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL, which had been informally known as ‘NewCo’) announced it was postponing the following weekend’s game between Chelsea and Manchester United. 

The match was set to be Sky Sports’ showcase fixture on Sunday lunchtime, with Chelsea’s home ground Kingsmeadow sold out. But with Chelsea having their opening Champions League match scheduled for the following Tuesday night, the 48-hour turnaround was deemed insufficient.

The WPLL cited “player welfare” as its priority when deciding to postpone the game, something Chelsea also said they had raised with the “relevant parties”. Player load has been a concern in the women’s game due to the prevalence of serious anterior cruciate ligament injuries.

The WPLL’s chief executive, Nikki Doucet, has been particularly vocal about the importance of player welfare. When asked at the WSL media day what fans could expect from the company now running elite women’s football in England, she said: “I hope players are supported the right way so that they can be the best footballers and best versions of themselves.”

However, this outcome leaves fans out of pocket and the WPLL looking foolish.

UEFA has washed its hands of the situation, claiming in a statement that the dates and draw principles had been “clearly communicated in advance” and were “common practice”. The issue has partly arisen because Chelsea and Arsenal have been paired together, so cannot play on the same day.

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Official statement regarding the Chelsea v Manchester United fixture. pic.twitter.com/4vj5N205Sg

— Barclays Women’s Super League (@BarclaysWSL) September 29, 2024

With Arsenal’s match against Everton next weekend set to be played at the Emirates on Sunday, one team was always going to have a quick turnaround based on UEFA’s calendar. Arsenal would have been unable to play on Saturday because their men’s team are at home.

UEFA’s line is that the league had the match calendar for over a year, but the organisational gap between the draw and the start of the women’s competition is tight. The draw took place on Friday following the culmination of the qualification rounds, leaving teams 11 days to prepare for their first match. Teams in the men’s competition had 19 days between the two.

It would have been equally problematic to make fans wait until last weekend to know when the game between Chelsea and United would be played.

The Women’s Champions League is constrained by qualifying, with criticisms last year coming from the tournament beginning so soon after the end of the World Cup. This year, the group stage will be completed before Christmas, as opposed to last year when there were two matchdays in January.

Despite this, the WSL is the only league that has experienced a scheduling clash.

In the three other divisions that have paired teams to maximise media coverage — Spain’s Liga F, Germany’s Frauen Bundesliga and Italy’s Serie A Femminile — the Champions League sides are playing on Friday or Saturday. For it to happen to Chelsea is particularly egregious given they, as WSL champions, were the only English team who were guaranteed a group-stage spot. The WSL’s organisers should have been more aware that this could happen and could have closed off the Sunday as an option when Sky picked this fixture in August

Former Chelsea manager Emma Hayes complained in the past that the FA did not do enough to support English teams in Europe. 

“We’re the only association that doesn’t help its team in Europe,” she said last year after Chelsea were the sole team to play on a Saturday following a midweek away trip to Real Madrid. “That is disappointing. We’re working against ourselves.”

Sonia Bompastor also raised the issue in her first press conference.

“In France, the federation helps a lot,” she said. “Anytime we played in the Champions League midweek, the French federation made sure we did not play a big team in the league to help us perform in the Champions League.”

English teams have underperformed in the Champions League and it is not hard to see why when you look at the scheduling. Two years ago, for example, Chelsea played Manchester City away in between their two quarter-final legs against Lyon. The WSL had scheduled what was arguably their hardest league game of the season during a round they fairly reasonably could be expected to make.

Changing the approach to English teams in Europe should be a key aim for the WPLL, but it has made an inauspicious start.

It didn’t help that the WPLL’s YouTube streams of 3pm matches cut out five minutes before the end on Sunday. The move from the FA Player to YouTube has been one of the most welcomed elements of its programme in charge of the league, but it is coming with its teething problems.

The postponement only creates issues for Chelsea down the line as a separate time will now have to be found for the game to be played, while Manchester United might feel aggrieved that they don’t get a chance to play Chelsea early on in the season, with the WSL champions still adjusting to life under their new manager.

It is right that a solution has been found that does not put players under strain, but the situation is a reminder of the contradictions within the growth mindset of women’s football.

This issue has predominantly arisen because TV companies want to show the most popular matches in suitable time slots. That is why Arsenal and Chelsea were paired for the Champions League and why Sky wanted to show Chelsea vs Manchester United as its Gameweek 3 fixture. The number of matches in the women’s calendar will increase — there is an expectation that the WSL will expand at some point and UEFA is adding a second cup competition next season.

Balancing the commercial and footballing demands is a challenge that is not going away soon.

(Top photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)