In the last two Women’s Super League seasons, only two teams have taken points from reigning champions Chelsea on more than one occasion.
One of those teams is Arsenal, the most successful team in the history of English women’s football and the side that are closest to challenging the Blues in this year’s title race.
The other? Brighton, a team on course to match its best-ever finish in the WSL as this season enters its final stretch.
Only promoted to the WSL in 2018, it was the Seagulls who ended Chelsea’s 33-game, two-year unbeaten streak in the league last February. They also took a point from Emma Hayes’ side in January.
But while these outcomes were surprising, they were by no means ‘freak’ results.
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In the past four years, this is a club that has established itself as one that can upset the applecart. In fact, Brighton spent part of the first half of the season in the WSL's European places.
That is a testament to the work that the club is doing – as is the fact that two Olympic silver medallists arrived at the club earlier this year.
A few months after reaching the Olympic final with Sweden, Emma Kullberg and Julia Zigiotti Olme were announced as Brighton players. Polly Bancroft, Brighton’s head of women’s and girls’ football, tells GOAL that the pair were “so impressed” by what the club could offer, while when Kullberg is asked what it was that stood out, she responds: “Everything”.
“The group has a really good group dynamic and you can build so much with this team," she says. "I think that is just fantastic to have. Everyone is working hard for each other, that's the thing on the pitch, but the facilities are great here."
“I don't think you can get this on the women's side yet in Sweden,” she adds, referring to the brand-new facility Brighton’s women’s team moved into in late 2021, after the club invested £8.5 million ($11m) into the training ground. “Hopefully, it will get there and hopefully soon, because this is how it should be.”
“We've our own pitches, changing rooms, gym, resistance pool, hot and cold pools,” Bancroft explains. “To be at the top of the pecking order in terms of access to those facilities is probably unrivalled within the league, and possibly globally as well. You no longer have access challenges.
“I think that infrastructure really sets the precedent for then everything else that follows out of it: the quality staff that we have working here, the vision, the integrated approach, the strategic work that we're doing. I think all those things together put us, certainly, in the mix in terms of one of the most professionally run outfits in the league.”
That is part of why Brighton is able to attract players that some might not expect, and why it is continuing to make a real name for itself.
Another factor in that infrastructure is a youth system that produces top talent.
Defender Maya Le Tissier, who ranked at No.7 in the NXGN 2021 list of the world's best teenage talents, has established herself as one of England’s most exciting young prospects, with teenagers Maisie Symonds and Libby Bance next on that conveyor belt.
Throw in the club’s commitment to an environment that embodies “openness”, as Kullberg describes it, and it is no wonder success continues to come.
“We're starting to listen to the voices of the players,” Bancroft says, explaining one of the “smaller” but “equally important” projects the club is working on – a player council.
“Some of the results that we've seen from that is that we've changed the colour of the kit shorts for the girls’ academy. We've moved away from white to blue, a darker colour, so particularly for those girls that are just starting their menstrual cycle, they don't have to have that worry of playing in white shorts.
“Little things like that, they might seem little, but they're so important.”
As for the bigger projects, the club is writing a strategy to fulfil its vision to be a top-four club. After avoiding relegation in its first WSL season, Brighton have really started to push on.
"We've done a lot of work around about who we are, how we want to be viewed, the culture,” manager Hope Powell said earlier this season when asked about the evolution. “[It's] very, very important to me, the culture. If you get that right, and everybody believes in the same outcome, you give yourself half a chance.
“I think what really helps is when you start winning football matches. [Then], automatically that belief, that inner belief, that collective belief starts to shine through. The players work very, very hard, tirelessly, in training and that's starting to show through.
“It's really that belief that we can, now and again, beat the likes of Chelsea. Maybe not always at this point, but we've got that. The challenge now is we've got to make that sustainable and continue over the course of the season."
Getty“[That ambition is] important because I want to achieve higher and I want to work hard to get better. If the club also has that mindset, everyone will have it,” Kullberg adds.
“We are working in the same direction. Even if it's a tough period, we always can go back to see what we want to work for and what we want to achieve.”
That ambition is evident in the staff beyond the players and coaches. It is that which makes Bancroft and Powell, for example, work so well together.
“We're both very driven,” the former explains. “We both want to achieve that top-four vision.
“We also joke that our work isn't done until we've won the Champions League and retained it! I think that sort of aligns to both of our ambitions, really.”
With everyone on that same page at Brighton, they have got plenty of what it takes to be successful. No wonder they continue to add big players to this squad – and take down the giants.
