Hayes targets full house

EMMA HAYES believes that, in the next few years, the women’s FA Cup final will be a Wembley sell-out.

Following a year of record crowds watching the WSL, today’s cup final between Chelsea and Manchester City is on course to break the 45,423 attendance record, with more than 50,000 tickets sold.

‘We should fill it,’ said Chelsea Women manager Hayes. ‘That for me is always the ultimate goal.

‘We started out with 35,000. What I have understood over the years is that’s how you grow the game incrementally. So if you go from 35 to 40 to 50 to 60, that’s how, because you want to solidify that. We’ve solidified a base around the cup final.’

There will be separate sections for Chelsea and City fans at Wembley today, after the clubs were issued only 5,000 tickets each, with the rest sold directly by the FA.

Hayes met her club’s new owner, Todd Boehly, over lunch on Friday. ‘He watched the girls train, I had a really lovely couple of hours with him.’

Boehly is, according to Hayes, ‘delightful, really passionate, he’s just a normal down-to-earth guy, really passionate about Chelsea, he loves Chelsea’.

It was not the first time Hayes had encountered the American businessman. ‘I saw him at one of the games he went to at Stamford Bridge. He’s ambitious, as we are, and it’s a perfect fit.’