Emma Hayes's Chelsea legacy shouldn't be tainted by failure to deliver the Champions League

When Hayes was first welcomed into this club, there was no major success to talk of on the women’s side. Chelsea’s honours at that point were lower-league titles and County Cups. Though the Blues were a real power in the men’s game, and had just been crowned champions of Europe, there was a lot of work to do in the women’s department – and Hayes was one of the key figures in ensuring that work was done.

“Emma came in and said, 'We are Chelsea. When we take part, we win’. The directors and the owner got completely on board,” Chelsea Women chairman Adrian Jacob told GOAL. "It was at the same time the WSL became more professional. We brought in more players. Everything we asked for from the club, we got, but it was bit by bit. We became good.”

Over time, it came together. It wasn’t just about building a good squad, it was about facilities, resources, staff - support in all departments, really. Hayes pushed for it, the club backed her and the results have been seen on the pitch.

For the last four years, Chelsea have been champions of England, all of the last three FA Cup titles have been won by the Blues and when they reached the Women’s Champions League final in 2021, they became the first English side to do so since Arsenal back in 2007. They’ve become the dominant force in the country - and that is not an easy status to maintain, especially when the WSL has become more and more professional, clubs have increased their investment and some have even sprouted up women’s sides that didn’t exist when Hayes first took this job.

Between 2019 and 2023, Chelsea won nine of the 12 major domestic trophies on offer and they reached the final in two of those three competitions that were won by others. To always be there or thereabouts when English women’s football is so competitive at the top deserves huge credit. Chelsea have raised the bar and that’s at least part of the reason why they’ve fallen short in recent weeks, as others have improved massively to chase them down.

But while Chelsea’s long-term investment in women’s football has helped them to power ahead in England, their competitors on the continent have been doing the same for as long or even longer. They too have financial backing, all-encompassing support and world-class players who are part of a well-structured project.

To bridge that gap needs experience, and it has taken time for Chelsea to accumulate that. Their first two seasons in Europe saw them run into two-time champion Wolfsburg in the early rounds, which stopped them in the tracks, but then five of their Champions League campaigns since have ended in a semi-final defeat to a former winner, be it Wolfsburg, Lyon or Barcelona.

How different would things be if they could’ve found a way to win the 2021 final? It’s a difficult hypothetical as Barcelona had been Europe’s best team all season, they were much the better team on the day and they deserved to be crowned champions. But since then, they’ve built on that and become even better, especially in their mentality, and that is the next step that Chelsea need to take. They are so close – but have again fallen just short.

There is more to it than just experience, of course. It’s about having the right game plan, executing it correctly and taking your chances when they come. But Chelsea’s second-leg defeat to Barca on Saturday did also feel like they were short in the experience column.

“The way we handled the first leg was excellent with the discipline and I think that's what let us down today, our lack of tactical awareness in terms of taking the fouls when we needed to,” Jess Carter, the Blues defender, explained. “We let them dictate the whole way through unfortunately. We've got to get better on the ball. We can't expect to win a Champions League when you give the ball back to Barcelona for 90 minutes, which is exactly what we did today.”

Barca, on the other hand, ground out the win. They weren’t at their best but they stuck to their task and their world-class players produced moments of quality when they were needed. That’s a very good team, but also an experienced one.

In that sense, if Hayes stuck around for another few years, you’d back her to put all the pieces together and you’d back her players to get over the line. Chelsea have the potential to win a Champions League, but they are just not quite ready yet.

And that’s fine. Perhaps because the Blues are so dominant in England, they are automatically expected to be capable of translating that to a European title. But that is to dismiss the quality of opposition that they have to take down in order to do so.

It took Barca time to get to where they are today, as it did Lyon. It also took disappointment and the experience of losing. Chelsea have matured a lot in that sense in recent years and certainly feel much closer to the very top teams than three years ago, when Barca dismantled them in the final.

That is what Hayes’ legacy is, that she has taken Chelsea this far. The Blues finished third-from-bottom in the WSL in 2012. Twelve years on, they are the dominant force in England, they’ve been to a Champions League final and were very close to reaching another.

They might not have lifted that European title under her watch, but if they go on to do so in the years to come, she will deserve some credit for the foundations she has helped to lay and the work she has done to make them a genuine contender.

“We all know what Emma has done for the club, what so many of us have done for the club over so many years,” Fran Kirby, who has been with Hayes and Chelsea for so much of that journey, said on Saturday. “What Emma has built here, it's not defined by one game. That's the same for every single player in this team that has been here for [a long time]. This one game doesn't define anything for Emma or anyone else. She can leave the club very proud of everything she's done and I hope that she takes that with her.”