Republic of Ireland international Katie McCabe was an unused substitute as Chelsea booked their spot in the Champions League league phase by completing a 6-2 aggregate victory over Real Sociedad.<\/p>\n
The tie was effectively put to bed in the first leg when the Blues stormed to a 5-2 win, where McCabe played the full 90 minutes, assisting and almost getting on the scoresheet herself.<\/p>\n
It was a more low-key event in San Sebastian, where Keira Walsh’s 54th minute effort proved to be the only goal of a lacklustre encounter.<\/p>\n
The England midfielder’s strike subsequently secured Chelsea\u2019s place in Friday\u2019s draw for the league phase of the competition.<\/p>\n
Blues boss Sonia Bompastor made four changes to the side that won 5-2 in London last week, with Lucy Bronze, Kadiesha Buchanan, Lexi Potter and Wieke Kaptein all starting, and McCabe among those to drop out.<\/p>\n
Ellie Carpenter caused problems in the early stages of the first half by sending a series of teasing crosses into the box.<\/p>\n
Lauren James blasted the ball past the post and Walsh latched onto another brilliant cross from Carpenter, but Julia Arrula easily saved before being called into action to deny Carpenter.<\/p>\n
With the score goalless at half-time, Giulia Dragoni was introduced after the break to make her Chelsea debut.<\/p>\n
Aggie Beever-Jones had the best chance of the game 53 minutes in after being played through by Carpenter and her strike was palmed away by Arrula.<\/p>\n
However, from the resulting corner Chelsea suddenly opened the scoring from a short routine which reached Walsh outside the box and the midfielder curled the ball home.<\/p>\n
Hannah Hampton pushed Ainhoa Marin\u2019s strike behind for a corner as Sociedad enjoyed a brief threatening spell.<\/p>\n
Nelly Las dragged a shot wide for Chelsea, who comfortably navigated the closing stages of the match to reach the league phase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland international Katie McCabe was an unused substitute as Chelsea booked their spot in the Champions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-612758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}