Chelsea head coach Sonia Bompastor believes the membership’s new funding shall be “game-changing” for girls’s soccer and hopes it permits them to proceed dominating within the Girls’s Tremendous League.
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and husband to tennis star Serena Williams, has bought a ten per cent stake in Chelsea Girls for a reported £20m, which additionally provides him a spot on the membership’s board.
His funding places the worth of the membership at £200m, which was the price positioned on Chelsea Girls when Chelsea FC Holdings offered the workforce to a sister firm earlier this 12 months.
Ohanian, 42, has invested in girls’s soccer beforehand, as the biggest shareholder in American aspect Angel Metropolis FC till it was offered in 2024 for a girls’s report £192.3m – and Bompastor is hopeful he may also help take Chelsea to a brand new stage.
Alexis Ohanian and his spouse and tennis star Serena Williams
“It’s a really exciting moment for the club, for the women’s team, for the women’s English game,” she stated.
“I feel it is in regards to the values. He confirmed from the start the respect he has for this membership and this workforce. For me, it means lots, as a result of this respect is one thing actually necessary.
“This investment is a game-changing endorsement for the women’s game, but also for young girls. That’s really important for the women’s game again, but also for England to have someone who invests in a team like Chelsea.”
Chelsea will full the home treble in the event that they beat Manchester United at Wembley on Sunday within the Girls’s FA Cup remaining.
Bompastor desires Chelsea to remain because the dominant drive within the girls’s sport, which ought to solely be helped by the brand new funding.
“We want to be the leaders,” she stated. “We want to be the team that shows every other team how you need to perform and how you need to invest in the women’s game.
“Hopefully, this instance will carry another individuals who will spend money on the ladies’s workforce on this league. I feel that is simply the instance we have to set for ourselves, but additionally to point out the opposite groups what they should do.
“That’s really good for us to be in that position. I want us to stay in that position for a long time.”
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Chelsea’s Aggie Beever Jones, Sandy Baltimore, Keira Walsh, Millie Brilliant and Naomi Girma mirror on their unbeaten season after lifting the WSL title at Stamford Bridge
Bompastor additionally hopes it may possibly assist Chelsea obtain their Girls’s Champions League dream.
“It’s a big help for sure. The club already had a lot of success. We want to make sure we are in a position to compete for the Champions League. This year, we couldn’t and we were not successful. I take the responsibility for that. Hopefully, next year we’ll be in a better position.”
Bompaster stated she hadn’t spoken to her gamers in regards to the funding, nor had she met Ohanian, though that would change at Sunday’s remaining.
“Hopefully I’ll meet all his family and I’ll make my kids play tennis. My oldest one loves tennis. We’ll arrange something together,” she stated.
“The game is something we want to stay focused on. That’s really important. That’s probably an extra motivation going into the game on Sunday.”
Bompastor continued: “It just shows we are in a really great place at the moment, but we still want to be even a better team, a better club. We want to be one of the best teams in the world. It means in terms of results on the pitch, but also we want to be a model off the pitch.
“We need to make certain when the younger ladies take a look at our workforce, they only dream of being one among our gamers for the longer term. I feel we’ve got the best folks across the girls’s workforce when it comes to worth and funding. That is very nice to be a part of this venture.
“They made the right decisions in terms of allowing this women’s team to have investors who come in and bring the team to another level.
“That is very nice as a result of this funding will solely go for the ladies’s workforce. It is going to assist the ladies’s workforce to speculate when it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to amenities, when it comes to workers, gamers once more. That is very nice and optimistic.”
