FA Cup final win encapsulates essence of Emma Hayes’s Chelsea

Chelsea are not a sentimental team by nature. Nor are they a team who you feel are overly preoccupied by questions of style and process. They can play football from the stars and football from the gutter; often in the same game, occasionally even in the same move. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly or unappealing side to watch. But nor, by the same token, do they crave your approval in the slightest.

What does this mean in practice? If you are Jess Carter, it means that when Lauren Hemp starts running at you with 80 minutes played in the FA Cup final, at the head of a five-on-three Manchester City counterattack, you immediately and instinctively chop her down. If you are Sam Kerr, it means that even when you have barely had a touch of the ball all game, you still somehow leave the pitch with two goals and a medal around your neck.

If you are Erin Cuthbert, it means that even in the thick of a bruising and broken midfield battle, you can locate the one moment of pure balletic grace that will turn the game on its head. And if you are Emma Hayes, it means you have no hesitation in substituting off one of your substitutes to close down the game, even when that player is Ji So-yun, an all-time great playing her last ever game for your club.

Maybe for the neutral or the purist, there was a certain unsatisfying imperfection to the way Chelsea won this: a deflected goal past a distraught goalkeeper in a game that could really have gone either way. In fact, it was hard to imagine a better expression of what Chelsea do, what they stand for, how they win. The freakish lob, the 25-yard screamer, the lucky ricochet, Hayes celebrates them all just the same: like the owner of a provincial construction firm who has