'Playing at Wembley is something every player dreams about'

Chelsea's Catarina Macario is excited about Sunday's FA Cup final while still ruing their Champions League exit

- Suzanne Wrack

It is a testament to the standard set at Chelsea that an unbeaten Women's Super League season, a League Cup win and, should they triumph over Manchester United at Wembley in the Women's FA Cup final on Sunday, a domestic treble will still not leave them satisfied.

"That's what makes this environment and this team so special," says Catarina Macario, who was viewed as so prodigious a talent that the London side signed her in June 2023 from Lyon even though she was yet to return from an anterior cruciate ligament injury. "We're never satisfied with just winning, we want to be dominant in how we play and there's definitely room for improvement in that. That's something that we have to take into next season and know that this is what we need to work even harder on to be able to achieve every single one of our goals."

The box that remains unticked is success in the Champions League, the club having been knocked out of the competition by Barcelona, the team that bettered them in the 2021 final and now at the semi-final stage for the third season in a row. Despite the frustration of their European ambitions going unfulfilled, the achievement of the team, the first to go unbeaten in the English women's top flight since it was relaunched as the WSL in 2011, is remarkable. Not least because they have done it in a season of overhaul and change, when the club matriarch, Emma Hayes, departed, Sonia Bompastor arrived and the squad underwent something of an overhaul.