Lucy Bronze has said she is determined to help Chelsea end their wait to win the UEFA Women’s Champions League this season.
The 32-year-old has signed for the Women’s Super League champions from Barcelona this summer and arrives with a wealth of experience in European competition.
Bronze is a five-time winner of the Champions League during spells at Lyon and Barcelona and has won the trophy in back-to-back seasons with the latter. The right-back helped Barcelona to quadruple success in 2023/24 before returning to English football and believes ‘fate’ has brought her to Chelsea.
Despite dominating domestically in recent years, Chelsea have failed to find success in Europe. Runners-up in the Champions League in 2020/21, the Blues have also exited in the semi-finals in each of the last two campaigns.
Arsenal (2006/07) remain the only English team to have won the trophy and that is a statistic Bronze is desperate to change.
“I was ready for a new challenge,” Bronze told Sky Sports.
“I hadn’t really thought too much about my future. No matter who I play for I’m 100 per cent focused on it to the end.
“It was at the Champions League final I spoke to Cammy [Camille Abily, Chelsea assistant coach] and Sonia [Bompastor, Chelsea head coach], people I’m friends with. I’d heard the rumours and said, ‘oh, I hear you want to live in London’. I said you’ll love it in England and Chelsea’s such a great team – and they were like: ‘Why don’t you come?’
“I said they didn’t need me, but they said they’d love to have me come in. ‘It would help us; you’ve just won the Champions League and we want to bring that to the club.’
Bronze says fate played part in Chelsea transfer
“A couple of days later, I was like: ‘Let’s go. Get me the plane ticket, get me the shirt, I’m sold.’ It was fate.
“Bringing the Champions League back to this country would be a huge success and would make women’s football even better.”
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