PREVIEW: Sonia Bompastor set for reunion as Chelsea face Lyon in UWCL | OneFootball

Keira Simpson, Women's Football reporter

Sonia Bompastor will face her former club in the UEFA Women’s Champions League on Wednesday night, as Chelsea head to the Groupama Stadium to face the eight-time winners of the competition, OL Lyonnes.

Lyon have won two out of four matches and drawn one against Chelsea.

The two sides have not faced one another since the second leg of the UWCL quarter-finals at Stamford Bridge in 2023, where the Blues secured a historic 4-3 penalty win after a 2-2 draw on aggregate.

Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor told UEFA ahead of the match: “They have a really good team, and it will be a great game to see where we are.”

Les Gones head into this match with confidence after their 8-0 win against Servette Chênois last week and sit at the top of the league with three points and a goal difference of eight.

The Blues sit on three points with a goal difference of one after their 1-0 win against FK Austria Wien.

Lyon, who are the first club to win 100 UEFA Women’s Champions League games, head into the game having won their past three games in the Division 1 Féminine.

The French side shows their attacking promise with a goal difference of 19 in only three games.

Chelsea will be continuing the fight for their first UWCL title, an accolade they have yet to claim. While Chelsea have been a dominant force domestically in the WSL, their European campaigns have frequently ended in the semi-finals, reaching that stage in 2018, 2019, 2023, and 2024.

Bompastor, who made 113 appearances and scored 19 goals for Lyon, then went on to manage Lyon’s academy from 2 013 until2 2021, then progressed to the first team until 2024.

“It will be an emotional game for me individually, even if the game won’t be around me. The most important thing is for me to prepare the team to perform at their best in that game, but of course it’s a really nice thing to just go back to Lyon and play them,” Bompastor told UEFA after the match against Austria Wien.

There will also be eyes on quite a few Blues.

Kadeisha Buchanan, who won the Champions League five times with Lyon, and Lucy Bronze, who won three, both started in Chelsea’s win against Arsenal last week and will want to continue their winning streak.

Ellie Carpenter and Melvine Malard also played for Lyon and transferred from Lyon to Chelsea under Bompastor’s management.

On her move to the Blues, Carpenter told Chelsea, “I feel like I have so much more to learn and give, and here at Chelsea, I can become an even better version of myself because I’ve already grown in a short space of time.”

Former Chelsea forward Johanna Rytting-Kaneryd signed for Les Gones earlier this summer but will miss out on the match against her former club after suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament.

The match kicks off at 20:00 BST and is available to watch on Disney+.

For detailed UWCL coverage, reports, and analysis, head to the FromTheSpot website and favourite our page on OneFootball.