Millie Bright determined to end Chelsea’s quest for Champions League holy grail

Millie Bright may have helped Chelsea to a domestic clean sweep last year but the England defender knows they still need a big improvement to reach their holy grail of finally winning the Champions League.

The Blues go into the second half of the campaign with their European dream having already been shattered for another year but 28-year-old Bright insists they will not be lacking for motivation when their Women’s Super League campaign resumes at Brighton on Sunday.

‘There’s so much more to come from us and every day we’re being pushed,’ she tells Metro. ‘We never settle for what we’ve achieved. Pat on the back, job done, good performance and move on. If we want to go on and eventually win the Champions League, we have to keep developing.’

Unlike Chelsea’s men, who lifted the European Cup for a second time last term, the continental competition has brought pain for the women — not least when they were thumped 4-0 by a brilliant Barcelona team in last season’s final.

A goal down in 33 seconds and 4-0 behind by the 36th minute in Gothenburg, Bright admits: ‘Football is full of lessons and for us that was a massive learning curve, to see where we are at against the best team right now, Barcelona.’ Worse was to follow in their final game before this season’s mid-term break, a 4-0 defeat to Wolfsburg which ended their European ambitions for another year.

Coming off the back of a shock 1-0 Women’s Super League reverse at Reading, manager Emma Hayes admitted her players’ heads were ‘all over the place’ with Covid ripping through the squad in a loss that saw Chelsea finish third in their group and eliminated on head-to-head results.

It was a cruel end to what had otherwise been a glorious year for the club, a 3-0 win in the delayed