Chelsea women’s manager Sonia Bompastor has revealed that she is in a long-term romantic relationship with her assistant Camille Abily.

in the summer and has enjoyed a brilliant start to life in west London, going unbeaten across all competitions so far this season. When in the hot seat, Bompastor, 44, arrived with her former Lyon team-mate Abily, 40, on her coaching staff.

The pair were hugely successful coaching the French side, winning three domestic league titles, the Coupe de France and the . Previously, they both played for Lyon and France, surpassing 150 caps during stellar playing careers.

They have now decided to go public with their 13-year romantic relationship, revealing that they share four children, aged between three and nine. The announcement, in an interview with , comes ahead of the release of Bompastor’s autobiography, A Life of Football.

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“We are always looking for happiness,” said Bompastor. “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.”

She 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.”

Abily added: “There is modesty, self-acceptance. Then, we were still two well-known players. We were already associated a lot on a lot of things. These are not subjects that I necessarily like to discuss. I think it's a self-acceptance already. Everyone around us, our children, know, there's no problem. But I'm not going to be the first to tell someone who doesn't know. And yet, we were really lucky, it went really well."

Bompastor has hit the ground running with Chelsea, guiding them to 13 wins and one draw from their 14 Super League games so far this season. The Blues sit top of the table, seven points ahead of , and are on track to win their sixth successive title.

They will face in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, with the first leg on March 19. While one of the favourites, Chelsea have never won the Champions League, having been beaten by in the 2020/21 final.