Three English teams – Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United – remain in the last eight of the UEFA Women’s Champions League this year.
This is the second consecutive season that three English sides have reached the quarter-finals, with Manchester City also making it to this stage last season.
Former Arsenal defender Alex Scott believes this consistency underlines the strength of English women’s football and the Women’s Super League, with top players now increasingly choosing England over the United States.
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‘WSL has the appeal’
(Image credit: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Scott, presenting as part of the ESPN broadcast team across Disney+ UWCL coverage, also commented on normalising the use of main stadiums in the competition.
The former England star praised the league’s evolution from her playing days, particularly its growing competitiveness against Europe’s elite.
Alessia Russo celebrates (Image credit: Getty Images)
Renee Slegers’ Arsenal beat Barcelona to lift the trophy last year for the first time since Scott’s 2007 cohort did, remaining the only English team to have won.
Speaking exclusively to FourFourTwo, Scott said: “I think it’s great. It goes to show the strength of the WSL. What it does is it makes other players from other countries think, ‘I want to play there.’
“I remember when I was playing, it was always ‘I want to go and play in America.’ Yes, we had a league here and I was playing for Arsenal Women, but you could see that in America, they were getting the crowds, they were professional, just everything about it.
“The best players were there and you always wanted to be competing against the best. And now, the WSL has that appeal and it makes every game competitive, which allows teams to then push on when they’re competing in the Champions League.
“If you look at previous years with Lyon and Barcelona, they’ve been dominant for so long and you don’t want that to be the case. You want it to continue to be competitive.”
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Playing in main stadiums
On the pitch, Arsenal hold a 3-1 advantage over Chelsea after the first leg of their quarter-final at Emirates Stadium, while Manchester United suffered a narrow 3-2 to Bayern Munich at Old Trafford.
A key sign of progress, Scott says, is how normalised playing in major stadiums is becoming. Arsenal have made the Emirates their regular home, while fixtures at Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford are no longer viewed as one-off occasions for Chelsea and United despite not being the norm.
“I don’t think it is seen as an opportunity anymore,” Scott added. “I think if you go back to when I was playing and someone mentioned that you’d be playing at a main stadium, we’d think, ‘Oh my goodness, this is amazing.’
Manchester United Women score in the Champions League (Image credit: Getty Images)
“Whereas now all these players are used to playing at the main stadiums, and the fact that, for Arsenal, it’s not, ‘We’re playing at the men’s stadium’ anymore – it’s, ‘This is our stadium,’ which I absolutely love.
“It’s great that it gives fans that chance to go out and support their team just like they would if they’re going to the men’s game at the stadium and enjoy that moment, because you love playing in the Champions League, under the lights in the stadium – the feel, the excitement of it all, and long may that continue.”
Alex Scott is an ESPN presenter for the UEFA Women’s Champions League on Disney+, with all matches, including the quarter-finals, available live on Disney+ on 1 & 2 April.