Katie Zelem wants Manchester United women to make most of Double chance

Days away from captaining her childhood team, Manchester United, in a first Women’s FA Cup final, Katie Zelem is hungry for silverware but also quick to contextualise just how far the team have come.

United stand on the brink of a first major trophy since winning promotion and the Championship title in their first season after the club reformed the women’s team in 2018. They could also pull off a league and cup Double, with the team four points clear of Sunday’s FA Cup final opponents, Chelsea, albeit having played two games more. Equally, they could finish empty handed. At the start of the season the target was Champions League football and, given their position and superior goal difference, that looks all but secured. But, now they have come so close, would it feel like a failure if they finished without a trophy?

“I’m going to say no,” says Zelem after a slight pause. “I’ve been at the team for five years. We had one year in the Championship, one year of Covid that wasn’t a completed season. So if you look at it from that perspective then being disappointed that we’d not won something would be a crazy jump from having no team at all five years ago.

“We have always set out to get in the Champions League and I think now we seem like we’ve passed it but we’re not secure yet; we’ve still got to play Man City and Liverpool. We can’t take anything lightly. Of course, every one of us would sit here and say they want to win something – we are in a cup final and we are sitting in a great position in the league – but I think failure is a bit of a strong word. We’ll try and win all our games and see what happens.”

The task is huge, United having taken a single point from seven games against Chelsea in the league since moving up