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On Saturday, Manchester City and Chelsea played each other in the League Cup final, a match Chelsea won 2-1.On Wednesday, City and Chelsea will play the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final.
On Sunday, they will play in the Women’s Super League (WSL).
And on Thursday next week they will play the second leg of their Champions League tie.
Four back-to-back fixtures between the two teams, played at four different grounds: Derby’s Pride Park hosted the League Cup final, Manchester City’s Academy Stadium will be the venue for their home quarter-final leg, the WSL match is being played at the Etihad, and Stamford Bridge will be the location for the second leg.
There are only 12 teams in the WSL, and the pool of good teams who can compete for the big cups in women’s football is far smaller than in the men’s game, which means sides often come across each other with increased frequency.
However, this four-match, back-to-back run is unusual and throws up a lot of questions about how to approach it. The fact that Manchester City sacked their long-term manager Gareth Taylor prior to the first fixture, bringing back his predecessor Nick Cushing as interim manager, has added to the intrigue, though Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor played that aspect down.
“The squad hasn’t changed,” she said ahead of the first match. “So he has the same players that Gareth (Taylor) had. You cannot change everything in four days. With Man City, we know they have these big principles for the women’s team and also for the men’s team (in how they want to play).”
Long runs of back-to-back matches were not infrequent in England prior to the introduction of penalty shoot-outs in the FA Cup in 1991-92. Up until then, if teams were not separated at the final whistle in the competition proper they would play replays until there was a result, but from that season onwards a shoot-out decided a match after one replay and extra time. Replays were scrapped altogether from the first round onwards this season.
The last FA Cup tie to go to four replays was a third-round match between Arsenal and Sheffield United in 1979, meaning they played each other five times in 16 days, scoring 16 goals in over nine hours of football. Arsenal were eventually triumphant and went on to win that year’s competition.
However, City and Chelsea’s current run feels more reminiscent of the four El Clasico matches over 18 days in 2011: a cup final, a two-legged Champions League tie and a league game, albeit Barcelona and Real Madrid also had league fixtures against other opponents during that run.
Those ties were particularly heightened by animosity between the two managers, Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola. In the end, the league game was drawn, the Copa del Rey final won by Real Madrid, and Barcelona emerged triumphant in the Champions League semi-final, going on to beat Manchester United 3-1 in the final at Wembley.
Playing each other four times in a row also brings to mind basketball’s best-of-seven finals, which enables each side to focus closely on their opponent and make tweaks between matches, something City manager Cushing flagged heading into the four games.
“I have the ability in the short term to just get to know one group of opposition players,” he said. “What will be really fascinating for people watching outside of both teams is how the games will be different, how the teams will evolve and change throughout the four games, how the approach of each individual team might change. That will be fascinating.
“The challenge for us inside the coaching staff and performance teams is to try and predict that. To look into the crystal ball and see, irrelevant of the result on Saturday, what the best observation will be of the type of Chelsea that we are going to play.”
Unlike in basketball, of course, these four fixtures are part of three separate competitions, all of which hold different meanings for the sides. The League Cup win was an important first trophy for Bompastor. Meanwhile, the WSL match is more crucial to a City side currently fourth in the league and chasing Champions League qualification that will come with a top-three finish. Chelsea, eight points clear at the top of the league, are all but certain of European football next season.
“We will take these four games one by one, but also we need to anticipate and look at the bigger picture of the whole block,” said Bompastor. “In terms of management, this is where it is really important to have depth in the squad.
“We know it won’t be possible for all the players to play four times for 90 minutes. We need to be prepared to rotate the squad. We know already how we want to do that in the different games.”
When she was manager of Lyon, Bompastor regularly had to face Paris Saint-Germain throughout the season. Last year, Lyon played PSG on six occasions — three times in the league, twice in the Champions League and in the Trophee des Champions to start the season. They won five of those meetings, and drew the other.
In the current run, she already has that first victory, and one question is how much of a psychological advantage Chelsea gained with that win. It means they have already beaten City twice this season, although the relative evenness of the game on Saturday should help City gain confidence.
“Finals always swing on moments,” said Cushing after the League Cup final. “The moment fell to Chelsea and we didn’t get back in the game at 2-1. But I’ve seen enough to know that we can be competitive in the next three games.”
For both City and Chelsea, the success of both their seasons will likely be defined by all three of them.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Chelsea, Manchester City, Soccer, UK Women's Football, Champions League, WSL
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