Jess Carter has had a whirlwind two years. The Warwick-born defender went from being a bit-part player in England’s Euro 2022 squad to emerge as a key component in Sarina Wiegman’s World Cup team a year later, when they reached the final. During that period she has also enjoyed success at club level, becoming a regular in the Chelsea team after a tricky couple of seasons after joining from Birmingham in 2018.
With Carter in the back three or four, Chelsea have won back-to-back domestic doubles. Now though, she and her teammates are facing up to a new challenge: life without Emma Hayes.
The Chelsea manager has not gone yet, but is leaving the club in the summer to become the US women’s national team coach. Hayes has been a champion for the advancement of women’s football and a major proponent in making the game fairer and more professional. Her absence will be felt by English football as whole, not just Chelsea.
For Carter, whose Chelsea face Arsenal in a potentially decisive Women’s Super League game at Stamford Bridge on Friday, Hayes’s exit is extra motivation for Chelsea to win big this year. “Some people were really devastated to hear that she’s going and it might have hit their confidence a little bit to know she’s not going to be there,” she says. “But at the same time [it will] also motivate people to try and get an extra win. One last win, one last push.”
Hayes is someone who has pushed Carter to get where she is in the past two years. Looking back at DAZN’s One Team, One Dream: This is Chelsea documentary from 2019, you can see just how far she has come. In the 2019-20 pre-season, Carter looked off the pace after struggling with illness in the previous campaign and Hayes did not hold back in her assessment of Carter’s performance levels, bluntly telling the defender: “I paid a lot of money for you. If you don’t improve, I’m selling you.”
Asked if the conversation may have helped her, she says: “At the time it’s conversations you don’t want to have or maybe don’t appreciate at the time. But I appreciate honesty and if that’s what she genuinely felt, then that’s what it was.
“There’s always been a little bit of a tougher love towards me for whatever reason. But part of that has helped me and helped my game to improve. I’m still here and I’m happy to have grown in football on club and international level and come out of the other side of it.”
Carter’s elevated status as an England international and Chelsea starter has given her a platform to inspire the next generation of girls playing football. Her relationship with her Chelsea teammate Ann-Katrin Berger has been a talking point too with Vogue including her in its Pride Portfolio and describing her as a “queer icon”.
Carter says: “I just don’t see myself as a role model at all. I’m just out here doing my thing. If I can inspire a few people along the way or if I can make a few people comfortable in who they are and happy to go and be who they are in any sort of environment then that’s amazing. It’s just an added bonus on top of getting to do what I get to do.”
Each season she is playing in front of more and more fans. All Chelsea’s Champions League games have been held at Stamford Bridge rather than Kingsmeadow this season, along with WSL fixtures against Tottenham, Liverpool and Manchester United, as well as the showdown against Arsenal.
Yet Stamford Bridge does not yet feel like home for Carter. “I know I should probably say it does,” she says as she looks out on to the pristine pitch. “I still really love Kingsmeadow and I always have done. We are outgrowing Kingsmeadow but it’s difficult when we play at Stamford Bridge and we only have a few thousand people because then it feels very empty. It doesn’t have much of an atmosphere and I feel like I’m playing in a bit of a park.”
Chelsea have struggled to fill the 40,000-seater stadium since coming close against Tottenham in November 2022, setting a record of 38,350. Less than 15,000 turned up to Chelsea’s game against the same opponents this season and it seems that success on the pitch does not guarantee a full house. The reigning champions have been eclipsed by Arsenal, who set a WSL attendance record in December 2023 when more than 59,000 people watched them beat Chelsea 4-1 at the Emirates (the Gunners have since beaten their own record for the 3-1 victory over Manchester United on 3 March).
The visit of Arsenal, however, is a chance for redemption not just on the pitch but also in the stands. “It’s going to be a great game, not just for ourselves but for the league,” Carter says. “The title race is really tight and that game is going to be a really big factor in it.
“We know the crowds that Arsenal get and the fanbase is phenomenal so you know we want their rival fans to come just as much as we want our own supporters here and hopefully we can sell it out.”
There is one Chelsea fan in particular who Carter is excited to see, better yet hear, at the game. Basil Goode has become a special figure in the past couple of seasons. Draped in Chelsea gear from head to toe, including homemade jogging bottoms with embroidered Chelsea badges, he can be found starting chants, banging his drum and waving his flags to support the players.
Carter recalls the first time she saw Basil, during Chelsea’s Continental Cup final defeat to Manchester City in 2022: “He just came out of nowhere and was on the stairs, jumping up and down, cheering and waving his flags. He brings the same energy from minute one to the end of the game, every single game, whether that’s a Champions League sell out or a game that’s got about 300 people.
“All our fanbase are great but maybe it’s only started to come into the game more recently to see the passion that fans have in the women’s game. Our fanbase is very different – women’s football to men’s football. We love that it is so family-oriented, it is so friendly as well. But hearing that extra bit of passion from the fans really helps us go the extra mile.”
They will need it against Arsenal.
