Sonia Bompastor and Camille Abily, the Chelsea women’s team head coach and her assistant, have revealed they are in a long-term romantic relationship and have four children together.
Discussing their relationship in public for the first time, on the eve of the release of Bompastor’s autobiography, the couple told the French newspaper L’Équipe that they were previously not comfortable talking about their private lives openly.
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“We are always looking for happiness,” said Bompastor, who is yet to lose a game in charge of Chelsea since taking charge last summer. “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.”
Bompastor and Abily were previously teammates at the French club Lyon, where they won two and five Women’s Champions League titles respectively, and both starred in the French national team for prolonged periods on the international stage, both surpassing 150 senior international caps.
Asked what had held them back from disclosing their relationship in public sooner, 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 [working at the same club] our whole life either. We don’t work together because we are a couple. We work together because we complement each other.”
Bompastor, who succeeded Emma Hayes as the Chelsea head coach, continued: “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.”
