Chelsea Women in crisis: A critical exit, player confusion and the role of the men's sporting directors

By The Athletic Staff

London — When Chelsea Women’s players checked their inboxes at 7:54 p.m. on Monday, the message was as abrupt as it was seismic: Paul Green, the architect of the club’s modern dominance, had been removed from his role as head of women’s football after 13 years. Six minutes later the news went public. By midnight, social media feeds of shell-shocked squad members resembled a digital wake.

“Absolutely devastated,” captain Millie Bright wrote on Instagram. Sam Kerr, Erin Cuthbert, Lauren James, Aggie Beever-Jones, Catarina Macario and Guro Reiten posted similar tributes, as did former manager Emma Hayes. Inside the training ground, at least one senior player privately labelled the email-only notification “disgraceful.”

The decision, conveyed to Green on Monday afternoon, ends the tenure of the official who progressed from Hayes’ assistant in 2013 to the de-facto director of football for the seven-time Women’s Super League champions. Sources close to first-team operations told The Athletic the parting is “like watching a masterpiece being torn apart,” and leaves the reigning champions nine points adrift of Manchester City, reeling from back-to-back league defeats for the first time since 2015 and searching for a new footballing identity.

An internal review concluded that leadership, not coaching, was the “sub-optimal” layer. Green’s wide-ranging portfolio—recruitment, contract negotiations, daily football operations—will now be absorbed by co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, both imported from the men’s side and neither with prior experience in women’s football, alongside recently appointed women’s CEO Aki Mandhar.

Winstanley, who arrived from Brighton in December 2023, has already influenced major calls, including the January sale of midfielder Oriane Jean-Francois to Aston Villa for a club-record £450,000 and the pursuit of a more aggressive player-trading model. Stewart, recruited from Monaco the following spring, has helped centralise authority under BlueCo, the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital ownership vehicle that purchased Chelsea Women from the parent club for £200 million in 2024 to satisfy Premier League profit and sustainability regulations.

Multiple sources say the centralisation has added “multiple layers” of approval for transfers, with Winstanley and Stewart also juggling men’s market demands. Agents and rival executives complain of increased bureaucracy; one senior figure accused Chelsea of trying to “fix what is not broken.”

The shift in power has coincided with a slide on the pitch. A 2-0 loss to Arsenal and a 5-1 humiliation by Manchester City—both firsts in head coach Sonia Bompastor’s 104-match managerial career—have effectively ended the title race. Despite the nosedive, the club last week extended Bompastor’s contract to 2030, a move interpreted by insiders as a show of faith that problems lie elsewhere.

Yet players are confused. Several discovered Green’s exit through media reports; others feel a squad refresh has been overdue for two windows. Attempts to sign Paris Saint-Germain’s Jennifer Echegini on deadline day failed, while injuries to Mayra Ramirez, Beever-Jones and Macario were not offset by reinforcements. Macario, out of contract this summer, has already rejected an extension offer, and as many as eight senior players face uncertain futures.

Staff culture has also frayed. Employees were recently asked to complete an anonymous survey rating every department’s performance and scoring statements such as “the long-term and short-term ambitions of Chelsea Women are clear.” Sources describe heightened internal competition and finger-pointing after defeats, a departure from the collaborative environment that underpinned Hayes’ trophy-laden reign.

Tactical drift is another concern. Under Hayes, training sessions doubled as theory classrooms, producing a team capable of self-coaching during matches. Bompastor, sources say, assumes players already possess that game intelligence, leaving younger squad members reliant on veterans for in-game guidance. “Sometimes we forget how to play football,” midfielder Erin Cuthbert admitted after Sunday’s 2-0 win over Tottenham.

That victory offered brief respite, but fundamental questions linger. Green’s exit removes the last senior figure who straddled both the Hayes era and the new BlueCo structure, and it exposes the philosophical tension between a head-coach-led model and the broader sporting department now run by men’s sporting directors.

For a club that once prided itself on seamless succession planning, the coming months will determine whether Chelsea Women can reassemble their torn masterpiece—or whether the cracks widen into a chasm.