TRIPTYCH – three days, three matches on the opening WSL weekend
They said it couldn’t be done. But now there are seven (yes, SEVEN) London teams in the WSL, I thought I should see as many as possible on the opening weekend of the 2026-27 WSL season – in person.
I wanted to take the temperature of four of these teams, plus a couple of possible contenders. And see how many England players I could find.
So I took my oyster card to far-flung corners of South, West and East London in darkness, wind, and humidity, and sampled the delights of a Balti chicken pukka pie, a fry-up, and a sausage roll respectively. Buckle up…
FRIDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER – GLAMOUR
Let’s start with the most eagerly-awaited tie of the opening round. The Pretenders versus the Legendary Red Devils. The Old Guard visiting the Disruptors. Aka London City Lionesses v Manchester United. Sky Sports knew what they were doing when they grabbed this as their first fixture of the season. Friday night under the lights in downtown Bromley. A couple of trains and a bus ride away. But it was worth it.
The match was totally sold-out. The hype was intense. And the crowd was beautifully continental. In front of me sat a young family from Spain, who cheered for ‘London’ throughout, no matter what was happening on the pitch. On my right was a small group of Mexicans, hoping to see Rebecca Bernal star for United. Around 99 per cent of us, however, were there to see the incredible happen: Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas run out onto the pitch at the Copperjax Stadium in leafy Hayes Lane as captain of London City Lionesses. (And that sentence still sounds mad to me).
The glamour was palpable. Owner Michele Kang (below, centre) wandered around greeting fans in her team’s cyan blue jersey topped with white neckerchief, and yes, I shook her hand as she visited the overflowing press area. Once the teamsheets were distributed, however, everyone was double-checking to see if it was right. And yes, this was an historic line-up: the first WSL starting XI to run out with precisely zero English players. The likes of Lionesses Freya Godfrey and Poppy Pattinson were consigned to the bench, alongside ex-England keeper Mary Earps – though both Godfrey and Pattinson did come on as subs. United, as expected, fielded their own trio of experienced England stars in Maya Le Tissier, Ella Toone, and Jess Park.
What about the match? I can report that the hosts gelled and pressed high up the pitch from minute one, all marshalled by La Reina, Alexia. The general had lieutenants all around her, leaders from other countries, including Netherlands re-born Danielle van de Donk, sporting a mask as she comes back from injury, French lieutenants Grace Geyoro and player of the match Delphine Cascarino, and more Spaniards, mainly from Barcelona. From Elene Lete in goal, and defender Mapi Leon to electric wingback Lucia Corrales (who was stretchered off, but told me post-match that it’s just her ribs), plus young sub Daniela Arques, and soon to be joined by returning Jana Fernandez, of course. Also loving their freedom to roam, dribble and show their skills were the superb Rosa Kafaji, Janni Thomsen and Isa Kardinaal.
United kicked off and van de Donk immediately ran forward, snapping at their heels, and she and the entire LCL team did not let up for 90 minutes. United were in a spin, pinned back and blaming one another as they struggled to even get out of their own half. They didn’t have a shot until the 78th minute, and their new Spanish head coach, Eva Olid looked perplexed (above, right), while her fellow Spaniard, London City’s Eder Maestre looked happy in the dugout and dapper in his smart new threads.
Miracle
It was a miracle that the score was only 1-0 at half time, as Phallon Tullis-Joyce found her goal peppered with outrageous strikes from everywhere, tipping the ball over, punching, diving and basically keeping her team in it. When it came to distributing the ball with hands or feet, though, she could not find her teammates, and it was the same with throw-ins, everything was snapped up by the blue Lionesses.
Where Jess Park (above, left) had run the show in this fixture last season, bagging a goal in the process, this time the game entirely passed her by. As it did the entire United midfield, although Zigiotti got on the score sheet with an unfortunate own goal on nine minutes. The strikers were living off scraps, the defence was flustered, and balls were booted away aimlessly, often into touch. Jayde Riviere was terrorised by Corrales and Kafaji up and down the touchline. The Red Devils’ decisive 5-1 victory here in 2025 was a distant memory.
By halftime, the sky was improbably purple with pink streaks, adding to the surreal quality of the night. We pondered over our cooling pies. Could this be the changing of the guard? Could LCL even be genuine title contenders? What had they put in the pies?
United had tiny glimmers in the second half, and their fans tried to buoy them up, but there was little to raise their hopes on a frankly grim evening. Shots continued to assault PTJ’s goal, but she kept the score down until a delightful, angled cutback from Cascarino found the late run of van de Donk, who back-heeled it past the keeper’s outstretched glove with eight minutes remaining. 2-0. Cue: wild celebrations.
There was a consolation goal in the 100th minute for United when one of their two impressive substitutes, Simi Awujo, connected with a loose ball to make the score more respectable. The other bright spark was new signing Monica Jusu Bah, who roved down the left. But anyone who was there knew they had witnessed a murder, and the result should have been more like 4-1 or even 5-1.
Blunt
To be fair, United boss Eva Olid (below, centre) faced up to the media bluntly and honestly post-match. And I asked her a couple of direct questions. Observing that they’d finished the game much stronger than they started, mainly due to the impact of Awujo and Jusu Bah, I wondered whether she was tempted to start with them for the next match.
Olid was pretty forthright, saying the duo changed the match, adding “The thing with Monica, she didn’t start, she just trained two days with us, but I think she made an impact.
“Simi came back from an injury. She just has been training this week, but imagine just training a few days and the impact she has is something so positive. If she keeps training, she can be a key player for us.
“And yes,” she agreed, “we will take that going to the next week as a possibility.”
To her credit, Olid expressed her frustration when I followed up by asking what she learned about her team from this match. “I think that we cannot lose time,” she said. “From minute one, we need to be ourselves. We lost 50 minutes without doing anything, just defending. We don’t want that.”
London City Lionesses have started doing the pre- and post-match pressers with not just the head coach, but also a player, which is a bonus. So once Olid had left the improvised stage, Maestre and Cascarino climbed atop their high stools (above, right), like cabaret singers about to launch into ‘Islands in the Stream’. Instead they answered endless questions about Alexia being captain with precisely no-one enquiring about the health of the stretchered-off Corrales. And yes, I did raise my hand, and yes, I was ignored.
Luckily, Maestre stopped to speak to me as he stepped off the stage, telling me that Corrales’ injury was not as bad as it seemed, and admitting that he was so pleased with his new outfit that he’d sent a photo to his mum, who approved!
SATURDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER – BITE
As James Brown once sang: Take me to the Bridge. Which is normally easy, that is when Fulham Broadway station isn’t closed. So this meant a slightly more time-consuming train and bus excursion to experience the first game in Chelsea Women’s commitment to play all their WSL home matches at Stamford Bridge this season.
They were up against Aston Villa, with yet another Spanish head coach, Natalia Arroyo in charge, and several new names in her side, including debutante goalkeeper, 21-year-old Akane Okuma. The only new season addition in the home side’s starting XI was Katie McCabe, who slotted in on the left of a back three, combining with the rapid Alyssa Thompson and getting cheered every time she took a corner.
In terms of English players, Chelsea started five: Hannah Hampton, Lauren James, Keira Walsh, Lucy Bronze and Aggie Beever-Jones, with Villa starting two: Lucy Parker and young captain Lucia Kendall.
Remarkably, Villa have never ever got so much as a point from Chelsea in all their meetings in all formats. So when Lauren James picked up a loose ball via Villa’s own commitment – to play out from the back – and effortlessly stroked it into the top corner on 11 minutes, it didn’t look good for the visitors.
But some of us have seen this film before. Most notably at home to Everton last season at Kingsmeadow. Chelsea bombarded the Villa goal with endless crosses, some wayward shots, and scuffed efforts. But mainly crosses. And just as Courtney Brosnan had done for Everton, this time the young Japanese keeper Okuma stopped literally everything that came at her. She just could not be beaten, making eight big saves and commanding her area. Comfortably Player of the Match.
Refresh
Meanwhile, Villa made all their subs to refresh their tiring starting XI, and broke away down the other end, where a combination of Hannah Hampton and Veerle Buurman contrived to bundle the ball into their own net as they strived to clear it. 1-1. But with 11 minutes left on the clock, surely there was still time to rescue something? Body language for Chelsea, however, wasn’t great and in contrast with the opposition, they made just one sub all game, leaving new signings Nelly Las and Giulia Dragoni warming the bench.
So the combination of determined defending and occasional breaks from the visitors was enough to see out the game and gain Villa their first ever point from Chelsea. Which must have felt like a win. And when it came to the post-match pressers, I asked Natalia Arroyo (below, left) to tell us a bit more about their young keeper.
Arroyo said you could see why Okuma was one of Villa’s options in the summer “to feel as protected as we felt today”.
She added that they’d had some good chats this week to see if she was nervous or having any doubts, and in which way they could help her.
“She’s still settling here,” said Arroyo, “still trying to learn the language to be able to communicate with all the players, but it’s not a surprise for me that she can save this amount of actions.
“She read the game really well and with young goalkeepers it’s always more impressive how she picked the right moments – when to bring everybody up, when to play short, so I’m so happy that it was a good first game. Again, let’s see if she can hold this level. But we are not surprised because we know she’s good.”
On tactics, Arroyo said they were expecting this Chelsea line-up. “So we were ready; we knew how to defend them.”
She also noted that Chelsea might be tired after playing away in Spain in the Champions League three days earlier.
Pragmatically, Arroyo felt that her team took their moments and avoided “jumping to places where it could open spaces that could be more dangerous. And I think we were disciplined in that, and that’s something important for us, especially out of possession. Everybody did their job.”
In the second half, apart from making substitutions “where the legs were suffering” she also set them up to be more aggressive and find moments where they could “bite them a little bit more.”
Above all Arroyo was “really, really proud that we can celebrate, with a lot of players feeling responsible for this point.”
In contrast, Sonia Bompastor (below, right) was understandably not celebrating. I ventured that the game reminded some of us of the Everton match, with another ‘worldie’ performance from an opposition keeper. And I wondered if the likes of captain Erin Cuthbert and Melvine Malard returning from injury could have changed one point to three.
Bompastor has no time frame for their return, and would love to have more availability in the squad, with different profiles. In fact, she pointed straight to her lack of options upfront. “Today on the bench probably I didn’t have a number nine playing in that position – who has a lot of experience in that position – so that’s the reality.”
But she didn’t want to make excuses, and insisted that anyone analysing the game and performance would agree that they created enough chances to be able to score in different ways. “I think many players in the squad had the opportunity to score,” she added. “But as you just mentioned, maybe the goalkeeper had a really good game. She made a lot of big saves.
“That’s the reality, but I still think with some of the chances we created, we could have done better. We had more than 30 shots on goal and I don’t remember how many touches in the box. So, if you analyse that, I think it’s enough for a club like Chelsea to win this game.”
When I asked Lucy Bronze (above, centre) a similar couple of questions after the draw, she was equally forthright. “Obviously it’s not easy to be away in Spain on Wednesday and playing today, but that wasn’t really a focus of ours. It’s not something we spoke about. We’re well recovered, we swapped a lot of players in and out. And overall today the performance probably deserved a win, but at the end of the day we didn’t put the ball in the back of the net enough times, and that’s what football can do. You can get punished by the other side and that’s just what happened today. We’ve still got one point from the game and things to improve on, but overall, performance-wise, it was good. Just need to get the goals.”
I pointed out that they’d been kept out by the exceptional Villa keeper, and Bronze quipped: “…and the goalposts!”
She did, however, mention that they’d played a little bit of a different system, with “maybe a slight bit of hesitation, but we created loads and loads of chances. I guess it’s just getting used to that and it clicking. I feel that once that moment clicks and everybody’s on the same page at the right moments… games like today we can kill off in the first half.”
Rotation
I also asked Sonia Bompastor whether it was tough playing in Spain on Wednesday evening then back at the Bridge on Saturday lunchtime. Basically, she says a club like Chelsea needs to be able to play every three days. “That’s our reality,” she added, “I think the fitness today was probably not what cost us the game or the three points. We had enough rotation on Wednesday to be able to be fit and fresh for this game.”
On the same theme, I’d asked her about the difficulty of winning both the WSL and Champions League in the same season. Indeed, this feat has not been achieved in the modern era. So I wondered how she would juggle these two competitions.
“I think you’re right to mention these two,” she said. “For me, Champions League is probably the best competition you can play as a player for a club. And I think this league has really, really top games and most of the games you play in this league are the same intensity as the Champions League.”
She feels you must build a squad able to sustain success against really good teams. “Champions League… League… for me it’s the same level. So, you need to reflect on how you can build a squad for that, having depth, having quality, having talent.
“It’s more for me as a manager to try to manage when I can. The best way to do that is always to start the games strong and be able to rotate during the game; when it’s possible, bring some freshness, fresh legs in the game and keep everyone available and fit as long as possible.”
Having a robust squad helps a lot, but it’s a real challenge, she says, “and every manager who plays League and Champions League has the same.”
Pushing her on whether this means building two different squads, one for the WSL and one for Champions League, Bompastor gave a considered reply. “I wouldn’t say building two different squads in terms of League and Champions League, because I think these two are really competitive and you need to have a lot of quality.
“But yeah, you need to at least have almost two teams… especially when you are not just playing every three days, but also traveling a lot. And when you expect the players to have fresh legs coming into every game, that’s difficult unless you manage the squad and it rotates.”
SUNDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER. FLOW.
My carefully planned Sunday morning excursion hit the buffers with stop-start train cancellations and curtailments. So it was back to the fallback option of two tubes out east, followed by a stroll to Orient’s BetWright stadium, and a lift to the vertigo-inducing media gallery way up above the pitch.
Luckily, the football between (temporarily) East London rivals Spurs and West Ham was full of duels and excitement and some flair and flowing football, mainly from the hosts.
Looking at the Spurs starting XI, they took a leaf out of LCL’s book, fielding zero English players, though their captain Drew Spence used to play for the Lionesses before joining Jamaica, and ex-Villa star Kirsty Hanson (above, centre) does at least play for a home nation in Scotland. West Ham boasted two England players in their own skipper, Katie Zelem, plus forward Ebony Salmon, another recruit from Villa.
This does mean we have the cream of international players thrilling us every week in the WSL, of course, including the Hammers’ three outstanding Japanese players, Riko Ueki and Yu Endo now joined by the sublime talents of Saki Kumagai (bottom of page, left). But this could also have a knock-on effect on the Lionesses of the future. They need to get minutes under their belt ahead of next year’s World Cup – once qualification is hopefully secured – and Sarina Wiegman won’t want her squad languishing on the bench. If Spurs’ right wingback Ella Morris, who did come on as sub, and a fit Jess Naz catch the head coach’s eye, much like Godfrey and Pattinson, they might just make the plane to Brazil…
Back to the action and Tottenham, again like London City, did not take their foot off the gas. Orchestrated by Signe Gaupset, just behind Cathinka Tandberg, with Hanson flying down the wing, Spence as quarterback distributor, and assistance from endless skilful Scandinavians, they finally look like the real deal. Toko Koga at the back, with Lize Kop in goal, seem so calm and assured, you feel a line-breaking pass can come from anywhere.
Surge
Gaupset surges forward and they look for spaces constantly, with late runs linking up vertically and horizontally, even diagonally thanks to Spence’s vision. Their strength and non-stop running makes them hard to knock off their stride, and when the ball came to Gaupset in the box at hip height on 18 minutes, she improvised a volley down into the ground, which hit the inside of the post and bounced into the goal. 1-0 (above, left). 12 minutes later, her delightful link-up with Hanson meant the Scot scored with a smart finish. 2-0 (above, right).
From half-time, Spurs continued with their high pressing, front-footed play, making it hard for West Ham to get a grip on the game. On the 74th minute, quick passes ended up at the feet of Hanson again, who shuffled across the edge of the box, sending a delightfully curled left-foot shot around the keeper and in. 3-0 (below, left).
The only concern for Spurs was Koga having to leave the field after another immaculate performance well beyond her years. But according to her compatriots and head coach, it was apparently just cramp, so everyone can relax. The other subs were pretty much like for like, so we saw the immensely talented Olivia Holdt come on, plus ex-Arsenal midfielder Victoria Pelova. Spurs’ changes also meant the Hammers new centre back, Laia Codina (below, centre and right) first had the headache of facing Tandberg and then trying to get to grips with Shekiera Martinez, up against her old club.
Without Koga dealing with everything at the back, her Japanese compatriot, West Ham sub Kumagai spotted a gap in added time, and lofted the ball through to Viviane Asseyi, who took one of her few chances and slotted it home. Perhaps 3-1 slightly flattered the visitors, but you feel that once the Japanese trio start to click and the defence gets its act together, they might just be okay under Italian head coach Rita Guarino. They will definitely miss Martinez though, who was their top scorer last season. Ueki and Asseyi will have to step up – as will Kelly Gago (below, centre), newly arrived from Everton – and they really, really need Ffion Morgan back.
Quality
Talking to West Ham head coach Guarino at full-time, she was full of praise for new signing Saki Kumagai, and said it was a no-brainer grabbing her from London City Lionesses on a permanent deal. I mentioned that the Hammers seemed to be struggling in the first half, but improved as the game went on. Guarino disagreed: “No, I don’t think that we struggled in the first half. We struggled after 25 minutes, because I think that we started well in the first 25.
“Then when you concede an easy goal like that [Hanson’s first strike], it is too easy for the quality players that Tottenham have to play in the way that they want to play.
‘Then it becomes tougher when you concede, especially an easy goal. But before they scored the second goal, I don’t think it was tough.”
Spurs head coach Martin Ho (above, right) was all positivity post-match. And no wonder. He lapped up the pleasing stats of his team having 20 shots, with eight of them on target. He also acknowledged their increased physicality.
I asked about Spurs players looking comfortable trying new things, even improvising, and wondered how on earth you drill improvisation into someone, when it’s meant to come naturally.
“It’s that unpredictable word you keep throwing back at me,” said Ho. “With a lot of these things we just give the players freedom. Certain players in certain parts of the pitch, they have more freedom to loosen up and interchange more and be more flexible. And when you do that, it’s a lot more difficult for the opposition to pick up.
“We work on certain aspects of where we want to get into, where we can hurt them, where we can get out. But by doing that, you give players flexibility. I think you see more qualities. When you make them more rigid, I think it’s harder to play.”
Yes, one game doesn’t make a season. But if Spurs continue to flow like this, they could be genuine contenders for the elusive third Champions League spot.
NEW RULES
One last note. Refereeing consistency was inconsistent. And I’m not talking about substitution window slip-ups. Emily Heaslip carried out everything to the letter for London City v Man United. She insisted that throw-ins and goal-kicks (that’s you, PTJ) be taken quickly, and she stopped teams migrating to the bench when a player was injured – it must now be the captains alone who go over to talk to their head coach.
In the other two matches, however, multiple players drifted over to their benches to take instruction without being reprimanded. We haven’t yet seen the keeper ‘injury’ aka tactical timeout rule being tested, where a nominated outfield player must go off within 10 seconds or else it’s the captain who leaves the pitch. But this is long overdue, and – if it speeds up the game – most welcome.
Photos: Helen M Jerome
