On Wednesday evening in Madrid, Emma Hayes will kick off her eighth and final Champions League campaign as Chelsea manager. The pinnacle of European football remains the only piece of silverware that has eluded Hayes in her trophy-laden 11-year tenure at the club.
Hayes points to the fact that she has a winners’ medal from 2007 when she was assistant coach at Vic Akers’s all-conquering Arsenal. “I have already won the Champions League, and that meant the world to me,” she said recently. “I’ve already won it and I know what my role was in that team, and I know the impact we all had on each other. So, it isn’t missing out of my cabinet. It’s very firmly there. I’ve got a gold one and I’ve got silver one. Would I like to do it as the manager of Chelsea? Of course, I’d love to. But it isn’t missing from my life.”
