Sonia Bompastor reveals 13-year relationship with her Chelsea assistant Camille Abily

Chelsea women’s head coach, Sonia Bompastor, has revealed she has been in a 13-year relationship with her assistant Camille Abily. Bompastor replaced Emma Hayes at Chelsea last summer with Abily joining as part of her coaching staff and the team remain unbeaten in all competitions this season.

Both Bompastor and Abily played together at Lyon and the pair were pivotal in the French club’s dominance in the women’s game as they won multiple league and cup titles. Bompastor took over as Lyon’s head coach in 2021 with Abily as her assistant and the duo continued their success as they won multiple domestic trophies, as well as the Champions League in 2022.

In the release of her upcoming autobiography, A Life of Football, Bompastor has revealed that she has been in a long-term romantic relationship with Abily and they have four children together, aged between three and nine. ‘We are always looking for happiness,’ Bompastor said in an interview with L’Equipe.

‘Finally, we realised that having lied for 13 years is a difficult secret to keep. With hindsight and our different experiences, we say to ourselves that we should have revealed it from the start. ‘The message that I especially want to give is that we realise that the most important thing is happiness.’.

When asked why they declined to go public with their relationship earlier, Abily said: ‘We were still two well-known players. We were already associated with many things. We didn’t want it to be just that. ‘We are working together at the moment, but it won’t be like this our whole life either. We don’t work together because we are a couple. We work together because we complement each other.’.

Bompastor added: ‘Revealing my life together with Camille, our relationship, after, as I say in the book, these 13 years of lies, is still a subject on which we are not entirely comfortable today. ‘We are rather discreet and we like to have a completely normal life. Growing up, feeling attracted to a woman, not knowing what’s going on, not understanding what’s going on, not having the answers and also not having people around you with whom you can talk about the subject, it’s not easy.’.

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