Alex Scott talks Women’s Champions League and the Chelsea-Arsenal rivalry on ‘Full Time’

Alex Scott’s name is etched into European football folklore for one swing of her right boot. In second-half stoppage time of the 2006-07 UEFA Women’s Cup final first leg in Sweden, the Arsenal right-back carried the ball 30 yards and lashed a rising shot under the bar to defeat Swedish giants Umeå. A goalless second leg in north London delivered the trophy—the first continental crown ever won by an English women’s side.

“That goal is stuff you can’t write,” Scott told The Athletic’s Full Time podcast this week. “To fly top corner, the whole team jumping on me, and to put my name down in history with the club … it’s special.”

Yet the strike was only part of the story. Scott’s primary assignment across both legs was nullifying Umeå’s Brazilian superstar Marta, then FIFA World Player of the Year. “I was having sleepless nights,” Scott recalled. “How do you stop the best player in the world?” She answered her own question by keeping Marta scoreless over 180 minutes, a defensive performance she remembers as vividly as the goal that clinched silverware.

Arsenal entered that final as underdogs. Training twice a week and still semi-professional, the squad coached by Vic Akers shocked the Swedish champions, then guided by Andrée Jeglertz—now leading a title-chasing Manchester City. On the bench for Arsenal was assistant Emma Hayes, whose tactical briefings helped convince Scott she could become “the best right back in the world.”

Hayes later crossed London to build a dynasty at Chelsea, collecting 16 trophies but never the Champions League. Her 2021 final defeat to Barcelona remains the closest the Blues have come. “She left Arsenal to create her own magic,” Scott said. “A few ex-Arsenal players followed, and the rivalry has been there ever since.”

That rivalry resumes next week when Chelsea and Arsenal meet in the 2025 Women’s Champions League quarter-finals. Arsenal, defending champions after upsetting Barcelona 1-0 in last season’s final, host the first leg at Emirates Stadium on 24 March before the return at Stamford Bridge eight days later. They remain the only English club to have lifted the trophy.

Scott, now an ESPN presenter for live Champions League coverage on Disney+, will watch from the touchline rather than the back line. “To have won it and now present it—that’s stuff I haven’t wrapped my head around,” she said. Since 2016 she has helped normalise former women’s players in mainstream broadcasting, inspiring colleagues such as ex-teammate Karen Carney.

From a fairytale strike in Sweden to fronting global television coverage, Scott’s journey mirrors the growth of the women’s game itself. “Ten years in, having presented World Cups and Euros, male and female, it’s still a pinch-me moment,” she said. The next chapter unfolds in north and west London over the next fortnight, with Scott’s voice guiding viewers through a rivalry she helped ignite.