On Saturday, Chelsea’s preparations for the new season, in which they will be defending three domestic trophies, will come to a climax. The Blues will play their final pre-season friendly in front of their home fans at Kingsmeadow, who witnessed an unprecedented unbeaten domestic campaign in Sonia Bompastor’s first year in charge.
Chelsea did not lose a game in the Women’s Super League, FA Cup or League Cup as they scooped up an incredible treble in 2024-25, each player and staff member etching their name into the history books in the process. But they were not content. A Champions League semi-final defeat to Barcelona left the Blues unsatisfied despite the amazing work done across the board, as that trophy once again eluded them. That it instead landed in the hands of London rivals Arsenal will have only added to the hurt and the motivation to put forth a better European title charge this time around.
It’s fair to say that it is a compliment to AC Milan, then, to have been chosen as the opponents for Chelsea’s final game before another highly-anticipated season kicks off next Friday, at home to Manchester City. The Rossonere have a young team – in that it was founded just seven years ago and also because it had the third-youngest squad in Serie A last term. But that it has been cherry-picked as the final test for Bompastor’s winning machine, a year on from playing three-time European champions Barcelona in the Joan Gamper Trophy, suggests it is doing something right…
On Saturday, Chelsea’s preparations for the new season, in which they will be defending three domestic trophies, will come to a climax. The Blues will play their final pre-season friendly in front of their home fans at Kingsmeadow, who witnessed an unprecedented unbeaten domestic campaign in Sonia Bompastor’s first year in charge.
Chelsea did not lose a game in the Women’s Super League, FA Cup or League Cup as they scooped up an incredible treble in 2024-25, each player and staff member etching their name into the history books in the process. But they were not content. A Champions League semi-final defeat to Barcelona left the Blues unsatisfied despite the amazing work done across the board, as that trophy once again eluded them. That it instead landed in the hands of London rivals Arsenal will have only added to the hurt and the motivation to put forth a better European title charge this time around.
It’s fair to say that it is a compliment to AC Milan, then, to have been chosen as the opponents for Chelsea’s final game before another highly-anticipated season kicks off next Friday, at home to Manchester City. The Rossonere have a young team – in that it was founded just seven years ago and also because it had the third-youngest squad in Serie A last term. But that it has been cherry-picked as the final test for Bompastor’s winning machine, a year on from playing three-time European champions Barcelona in the Joan Gamper Trophy, suggests it is doing something right…
There are not many bigger clubs in world football than Milan. Only Real Madrid have won more European Cups on the men’s side, and only Juventus have enjoyed more success in the Italian domestic game than the Rossoneri. It’s a club synonymous with the big stage, big players and big titles.
Now, it is looking to build success on the women’s side. Most clubs in Serie A Femminile are very young, with Italy a little behind other European nations in the women’s football world despite having more historic roots in it than most. Alongside Milan, all of Juventus, Roma and Inter also founded their women’s team in 2017 or later, with only three clubs in this season’s top-flight established before 2014.
But there has been a lot of growth in the last six years in particular, starting with Italy’s surprise run to the Women’s World Cup quarter-finals in 2019. Both Juventus and Roma have made a splash in the Champions League since then, putting up good fights against Lyon and Barcelona in their respective maiden quarter-finals, while the Azzurre put women’s football even more firmly on the map across the nation this past summer with their run to the Euro 2025 semi-finals.
Like many, Suzanne Bakker, head coach of Milan, hopes Italy’s success in Switzerland can have a positive impact on the domestic league and the interest in it across the country. But the majority of her focus this past summer has been on how the Rossonere can improve and muscle in on the chase for silverware that has largely been dominated by Juventus and Roma in this new professional era of Italian women’s football.
Milan had two players in the Italy squad at Euro 2025, in goalkeeper Laura Giuliani and defender Julie Piga, and to ask Bakker what they can bring to her team, which finished fifth in Serie A last season, elicits an interesting response. “One of the success points for them was to be a team, then you can reach a really high level together. What does that mean? To be a team and to be a team player?” she ponders, speaking to BALLGM ahead of the club’s trip to England to take on Chelsea.
“Now, in the pre-season, everyone is happy because all the players are playing, but you see that when they are disappointed, or maybe about an injury when that happens, or maybe they play less, then you see the true attitude of a player. Then we need all professionals, I think, and they can help, because Laura was, of course, the first goalkeeper, but Julie was more of a sub, but she comes in and she was also very valuable for the team because sometimes you forget that it’s not only the players who play on the pitch that are important.
“It’s the whole team and each player has their own quality and some of the players are pushing every day on the pitch, and they play maybe less minutes during the games, but they are so important. The other players who are maybe long time injured can also bring the right mentality to other players who may be complaining because they play less. I think sometimes we forget that. They can bring that experience and also that high intensity, what it means to play on the highest level in Europe. They can bring that to the other players and they are doing that because they are both leaders in our team.”
It’s an interesting reflection on how a golden summer for Italy can connect to Milan’s upcoming season because, in truth, there are more differences than similarities between the two sides. That is particularly the case in the playing style.
Bakker’s background is dominated by Ajax, the club where she was the head coach of the Under-19s for four years before stepping into the first-team job in 2022. In two seasons in charge, she led the club to its third and most recent league title, a Dutch Cup triumph and a first Women’s Champions League quarter-final. Incidentally, Chelsea were the opponents, emerging victorious over two legs, the second of which was a 1-1 draw.
When Milan were searching for a new coach last year, it was Bakker they were drawn to. In the first conversation between her and the club, the Dutchwoman asked what was expected in terms of playing style, and the response was that they wanted her to bring what she learned at Ajax, a club with a philosophy that is universally revered.
Understandably, exporting that unique brand of football comes with its challenges. Ajax leans heavily on a youth set-up where all its academy products spend years learning this style and, as such, come to understand it heavily. In Milan, Bakker is having to start from scratch. “It takes more time,” she concedes.
But the progress being made in that regard has been telling both on and off the pitch. In Serie A Femminile, the division splits in half for the final two months of the season, meaning the top five teams play each other home and away for the final stretch of the campaign, while the bottom five meet twice more. It’s a brutal run of games for those in the top half in particular, given the quality opposition they have to face every single week, but it’s a good learning curve for a team like Milan as it tries to bridge that gap to Juventus and Roma.
The players can see the level needed and rise to it, as Milan did by losing just two of those eight matches. “With all respect to the [bottom five teams], the intensity is different,” Bakker remarks. “All the players have much more information and experience [from that] which will help them this season.”
When the coach sat down with her players after her first campaign ended, she was given further indication that things were moving in the right direction.
“They like the way that we are playing,” Bakker explains. “To be honest, in the first months, it took a little bit too much time to find the right connections on the pitch. Also for me, and for some of the other staff members, it was new. There are 26 players and I know only two players from the Netherlands – and I only know them a little bit. To understand them and also what it means to play in Serie A, it’s totally different than in the Netherlands, for example. We learned a lot in the first weeks but it takes also too much time and we lost some points.
“But if you see how we finish the competition against the top four teams, we are competitive with them. You can see that in the results and also in the way we want to play. I’m very proud of that.”
Bakker’s work has clearly caught external attention, too. Milan were invited by Barcelona to be part of the Joan Gamper Trophy last year, and while that was as the Dutchwoman was preparing for her first season in charge, it came off the back of her rise in stock following Ajax’s run to the Champions League knockouts. Now, Chelsea have identified the Rossonere as the perfect final test for their dominant side, as the Blues prepare for a big season that kicks off with one of the toughest fixtures possible, against City. It’s another great opportunity for this young Milan side.
“I think that we deserve that maybe, if you look at our performances in the last games of the last season,” Bakker says. “I think it’s important for us. Of course, we are a good team but Chelsea showed in the last seasons that they’re a great team. They play every year in the Champions League, every year they make it to maybe the quarter-final or semi-final, and also if you look to their players and if you compare with our players, who have one year experience in Serie A or with the U23 national team, I think all the players of Chelsea played five or maybe 10 years for the national team. To compare ourselves with that level, that helps us. I’m very happy that we have the invitation from Chelsea, that we can measure ourselves with them.”
It’ll present Milan with a different type of challenge that can help them when it comes to the latter stages in Serie A and the cup competitions, too, when they are playing against top sides that will deprive the Rossonere of the possession they want.
“There are moments where we cannot play in the way we want to play normally, because we have also to be realistic,” Bakker says, previewing Saturday’s meeting. “Then it’s more maybe about how to defend if you have less of the ball. In the league, we want more of the ball, but we also know that sometimes there are situations in the game, or momentum in the game, that you have to draw back more in a lower block. That’s then the goal of that friendly match.”
It’s just a friendly, in essence, but it’s a small part of the bigger picture for Bakker and her Milan side – and Bakker likes to work in the small parts. The club has big goals it is working towards, namely in delivering a first trophy for the women’s team and qualifying for the Champions League.
“But for me as a coach, I look every time to the next match to make the goals as small as possible,” Bakker says. “We all know we want to win that game but, for me, it’s how can we win that game? It’s to focus on what to do. What’s the next action? That’s also what we are doing every day. Because, a game, you are not winning it on matchday. A game, you will win that every day, and not only on the pitch but also outside the pitch when you’re in your home and think about the sleep, think about the food. That’s what we are focused on every day.
“Milan is a big club with the men, a very historical club, and we want to have that also with the women’s team. But you can only do that if you win a lot of games and then I come back to the short-term goals of ours.”
This weekend, the short-term focus for Bakker and Milan is on Chelsea, Bompastor and how to get the better of her Blues in order to put on a good performance and get a good result that can help prepare the Rossonere for the challenges that lay ahead this season. Chelsea have made winning trophies and playing big European games the norm in the last 10 years. As Milan strive to get a taste of that success, they are about to get a glimpse into how one of the best teams in the women’s game operates.
“For sure, we will learn a lot of things,” Bakker says, signing off. “We are looking forward to it.”
