Sam Kerr Strikes As Chelsea Retain Women’s FA Cup Before World Record Crowd

In front of the largest-ever attendance for a women’s club match in history of 77,390, Chelsea won the Women’s FA Cup for a third year in a row on yet another record-breaking occasion for the women’s game. It is the fifth time in nine seasons that Chelsea have triumphed in the competition.

In a tight match, the introduction of Danish forward Pernille Harder just before the hour mark transformed the game in Chelsea’s favor. She allowed the front three to interchange more fluidly, almost scoring from her first touch and constantly running in behind the Manchester United defense.

In the 68th minute, Harder once more dissected the Manchester United back-line and slid the ball across for Australian forward, Sam Kerr, who last weekend carried her country’s flag at the coronation of King Charles III. Kerr tucked the ball away to score in the Women’s FA Cup final for the third successive year.

Kerr thus became the first woman to achieve this since Kim Little achieved the feat in three consecutive finals between 2009 and 2011. Including the annual FA Continental Cup, Kerr has incredibly scored in six domestic Cup finals in a row over three seasons. Her goal, her 88th for Chelsea, was also her eighth in eight matches against Manchester United and her fifth in those three Cup finals.

Chelsea captain, Magdalena Eriksson, has become the first woman in the 53-year history of the competition to lift the trophy in three successive years. She received the trophy from the new Prince of Wales, William as Chelsea won their thirteenth major honor under coach Emma Hayes.

In a fractured first half, Manchester United thought they had given themselves the perfect start when Leah Galton capitalized on a defensive error to slide the ball into the Chelsea net within the first 30 seconds. However, the goal was quickly ruled out for offside and on a warm afternoon, the pace of the game subsided as both teams tentatively probed the other without committing too many numbers forward.

The next clear opportunity fell to defender Millie Turner on the half-hour when stabbed at a loose ball when it fell to her from a set-piece, but her deflected effort was clawed away by Chelsea goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger. Moments later, Galton should have done better than prod the ball over the bar from within the six-yard box from a right-wing cross by Alessia Russo. Chelsea’s best chance came when former Manchester United player, Lauren James, looped a header towards the top corner which Mary Earps, at full stretch tipped onto the far post.

The crowd for the match today was the first time the women’s FA Cup final has sold out the English National Stadium at Wembley since the match was played there for the first time in 2015. Then filling a third of the ground was perceived as a success, establishing a new record for the competition. In eight years that figure of 30,710 has more than doubled.

The figure is also a world record for a domestic women’s club match beating the previous mark of 60,739 set when Atlético de Madrid hosted FC Barcelona at the Estadio Wanda Metropolitano in a Spanish league match in March 2019. Only the two attendances of over 91,000 for FC Barcelona’s two women’s Champions League games at Camp Nou last season have exceeded today’s Wembley crowd for a match between two women’s club sides.

That year, the winners, Chelsea, received only £8,600 ($10,830) in prize money, barely enough to cover the team’s expenses. That figure has also risen ten-fold, with this year’s champions winning £100,000 ($124,487) in prize money – with £50,000 ($62,244) awarded to the runners-up – from a total fund of £400,000 ($497,949). However this still pales into insignificance against the winner’s of the men’s FA Cup final who will earn £2 million ($2.49 million) in prize money, £1 million ($1.245 million) to the runners-up.