Chelsea clinched its sixth straight Women’s Super League title on Wednesday to secure a second trophy of the season in its bid for another domestic treble in English soccer.
After seeing second-place Arsenal lose 5-2 to Aston Villa, Chelsea beat Manchester United 1-0 away to move into an unassailable nine-point lead with two games remaining and stay undefeated in the league.
Chelsea has already won the League Cup this season and has advanced to the FA Cup final, where the team will face United again at Wembley Stadium on May 18. The London club lost to Barcelona in the Women's Champions League semifinals to end the quadruple hopes of Sonia Bompastor's squad.
Chelsea also completed the Premier League-FA Cup-League Cup treble in the 2020-21 season.
Arsenal, which was coming off a 4-1 victory over Lyon to reach the Champions League final on Sunday, was the last team other than Chelsea to win the Super League — in 2019.
England right back Lucy Bronze scored Chelsea's headed winner against United in the 74th minute and has captured the league title in her first season at the club following a move from Barcelona. She has also won it with Liverpool and Manchester City.
Chelsea spent big again this season, including making United States defender Naomi Girma women’s soccer first million-dollar player by signing her from San Diego Wave in January. The fee was a reported 900,000 pounds ($1.1 million), surpassing the $788,000 that Bay FC paid to sign Zambia striker Rachael Kundananji from Madrid CFF last year.
Having a strong, deep squad has paid off, with Chelsea not losing in any domestic competition this season. In the league, the team has won 17 games and drawn the other three.
“The fortunate thing for us this season is that we have always been unbeaten, so there's always been two things to go for,” Bronze said.
“We knew before the game that Arsenal had got beat so we knew what we needed coming into this game. But we wanted to win, we wanted to keep the unbeaten run this season. Although we've won the league tonight, we've got two games left — we want to win those games and stay unbeaten this season.”
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Steve Douglas, The Associated Press
