The Athletic's end-of-season awards, 2024-25: Women's football
The English domestic season finished on Sunday with Chelsea beating Manchester United 3-0 in the FA Cup final to secure a treble in Sonia Bompastor's first season as head coach.
Chelsea swept all before them domestically, going unbeaten in the Women's Super League (WSL) and winning the League Cup. With Arsenal versus Barcelona in the Women's Champions League final on Saturday, now seems like a good opportunity to reflect on some of the campaign's outstanding performances.
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The Athletic's team of experts have been voting for their 2024-25 award winners, covering the WSL and European competition.
We have also announced our winners from the men's game — you can read about those here — but here are the players and managers we are recognising for their achievements this season in women's football…
Alessia Russo shared the WSL's Golden Boot award with Manchester City's Khadija Shaw — whose injuries limited her to 10 starts from 14 top-flight appearances — on 12 goals each and, although Arsenal colleague Mariona Caldentey deserves a special mention, this season more than ever highlighted the importance of the collective rather than the individual.
Chelsea are the first WSL side to go unbeaten through a 22-game league campaign but with Sam Kerr yet to return from her January 2024 knee injury, they only had four players among the league's 25 leaders for goal contributions (goals and assists) — Aggie Beever-Jones (13th on nine), Guro Reiten, Catarina Macario and Johanna Rytting Kaneryd (joint-18th on eight). They were a classic example of a team being greater than the sum of its parts.
Russo had a good mid-season run of form (seven goals in six games, five of them wins), helping turn around Arsenal's fortunes after a disrupted start to the campaign.
Charlotte Harpur
The story of the summer will be whether Olivia Smith remains at Liverpool or gets poached by one of the WSL's 'big four' (Chelsea, Arsenal and the two Manchester clubs).
It is a remarkable narrative arc for a player who only arrived in England as a teenager last summer and was relatively anonymous outside Canada. But Smith, now 20, has a knack for showing up and lighting leagues on fire, having done it back home for North Toronto Nitros in 2022 and then in Portugal.
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The WSL was always going to be her biggest test, having been signed after a single 16-goal season with Sporting CP in Lisbon. Yet, as far as debut years go, Smith smashed the assignment, all while playing out of position (it wasn't until coach Matt Beard's sacking in late February that she was moved out wide) in a team who underperformed massively in terms of creating attacks over the first half of the campaign.
As the campaign progressed, Smith showed strength and conviction that belied her age, as well as an ability to produce goals entirely on her own. That has not gone unnoticed, with many now asking: what is Smith's ceiling, if given the proper structure to flourish?
Megan Feringa
Chelsea's sixth WSL title on the trot felt like a procession, which is precisely why Bompastor deserves to win this category.
Before the season started, the narrative was that Chelsea were at their most vulnerable following the summer departure of the hugely successful Emma Hayes, now head coach of the United States women's national team. Bompastor would surely struggle to adjust and conquer, particularly while implementing a new style of play.
She has led Chelsea to a treble in record-setting, invincible style, claiming the league with the most wins in a season (19) and becoming the first undefeated champions since Hayes' 2017-18 side, who won 13 and drew five of their 18 league games.
To not only maintain Chelsea's winning DNA but to, in almost every way possible, augment it is a triumph.
Megan Feringa
Chelsea's collective strength is second to none, as their sixth successive league title shows but the top-four sides produced some cracking individual displays this season, and our WSL Team of the Season reflects that.
Phallon Tullis-Joyce helped Manchester United record 13 clean sheets across the 22 matches, the joint-best record this season alongside Chelsea's Hannah Hampton. The 28-year-old United States international curated a stellar highlights reel as she seamlessly replaced England No 1 Mary Earps in the United goal. Of the 77 shots on target Tullis-Joyce faced, she boasted an 83 per cent save rate. Comparatively, Hampton saved 79 per cent of 62 shots on target. That United will play Champions League football next season is in many ways down to Tullis-Joyce.
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Emily Fox and Katie McCabe regularly stood out at full-back for Arsenal, with the latter particularly displaying her quality in attack as she finished the season with the league's highest expected assists number, a measure of the quality of chances a player makes (7.3).
The player next in line behind McCabe for that metric? Arsenal team-mate Caldentey (6.0). The Spain international enjoyed a standout season on and off the ball, finishing joint-fifth in goals scored (nine) despite often being deployed in a far deeper midfield position. She is arguably unlucky to lose out to colleague Russo in our Player of the Season vote.
Further back, Chelsea's Millie Bright and Laia Aleixandri of Manchester City both produced solid seasons in their respective defences, while Erin Cuthbert and Wieke Kaptein were influential figures in midfield for the champions.
Despite injuries ultimately hampering her season, Shaw still finished with 12 goals from her 14 matches, level with Russo, who made seven more appearances. Smith's inclusion in this team is evidence of her rising stock.
Megan Feringa
One of those goals you could watch on repeat.
Centre-back Bright looks up and sails a long cross towards the back post. From some angles in videos of this screamer, Bright seems to have thumped her pass into the no-man's land of Spurs' defence. But then Rytting Kaneryd arrives, leaping mid-air with her right leg in full ninja power mode to meet the ball with perfect, volleyed precision.
It's a stunning goal that epitomised Kaneryd's standout performance in a 5-2 Chelsea win — 10/10, no notes.
Megan Feringa
Aitana Bonmati continues to be the benchmark for Barcelona, who are determined to prolong their great run of success both domestically (it's now six titles in a row) and in Europe (they go for a third straight Champions League title against Arsenal on Saturday in Lisbon). She is the team's compass, setting the tempo of a game and orchestrating every move.
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Winner of the past two Ballons d'Or, Bonmati is a player who always rises to the occasion in big games. In this season's Champions League, she was instrumental in the semi-final against Chelsea, who are proving to be her favourite victims —after a 4-1 win at home, she scored the first goal of the second leg at Stamford Bridge to squash any remaining hopes of a comeback.
Laia Cervello Herrero
We have known for a while that Melchie Dumornay has the potential to become the world's best player, and Lyon had snapped her up even before she impressed for Haiti at the World Cup two years ago. After a decent first season with France's biggest club, she exploded into a top-class attacker in this one, scoring at a rate better than a goal every 90 minutes.
Her sensational dribble and finish in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final against Arsenal was a good example of her directness.
At her best, Dumornay seems unstoppable and the 21-year-old will surely continue to improve.
Michael Cox
When Pere Romeu accepted the position of women's head coach at Barcelona, the challenge was considerable. Jonatan Giraldez left the club last summer at the top, winning the second treble in their history — four 2023-24 titles if you count the Supercopa de Espana.
Taking over the team that achieved all that was not easy. If you continue with the project, you do not create the impression of someone achieving success for the first time, and anything less than matching the extraordinary achievements of the previous season will be seen as a failure.
Sure enough, the start of Romeu's tenure had its sticky moments. The 2-0 away defeat against Manchester City in their Champions League group-stage opener in October set alarm bells ringing. The fear is not so much that Barca will struggle in Spain, where they have no rivals, but about losing momentum in Europe against WSL teams collectively stepping up their game.
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La Liga losses against Levante and Real Madrid in February and March brought the critics out again but the end of the season and, especially, the team's performances in the Champions League knockout rounds against Wolfsburg and Chelsea, have vindicated a coach who has Barcelona back in the Champions League final and is close to a second straight treble after winning La Liga and qualifying for the Copa de la Reina final on June 7.
Laia Cervello Herrero
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
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