Rising Ballers: Lauren James is one half of the next great sibling duo
Think about sports’ most iconic sibling duos: Serena and Venus Williams, Peyton and Eli Manning and Pau and Marc Gasol.
It’s time to add another pair to that list: Reece and Lauren James.
Reece James, a 23-year-old Champions League winner with Chelsea F.C., has already had his football coming out party. We’re here to talk about Lauren James, who also plays her club football with Chelsea.
Lauren James began her club career with cross-city rivals Arsenal, which has historically been England’s best women’s team. She trained with the Arsenal boys’ teams as a 13-year-old and quickly rose up to the women’s first team, becoming its second-youngest player ever at 16. As one of English football’s top clubs, though, Arsenal seemingly couldn’t find the minutes James needed to develop, so the young attacker looked for a move.
Like her brother, James went north to Greater Manchester to prove herself before returning to the capital city.
While Reece James continued his development on loan at Wigan Athletic, Lauren James moved on a permanent transfer to Manchester United Women in 2018. At the time, the Women’s Red Devils were effectively a start-up, having just formed that year to compete in the revamped FA Women’s Championship, the second tier of English women’s football.
United dominated the league, winning 18 of 20 matches and securing promotion to the Women’s Super League with a first-place finish. They outscored their opponents by an absurd 98 to 7 goals across the season.
At 17, James quickly showed that she was already too good for second division football. She scored 15 goals in all competitions in the 2018-19 season while not even playing as a striker.
James and United continued that momentum into their Women’s Super League debut. While the league was unfortunately unable to complete the 2019-20 season because of the coronavirus pandemic, when play stopped, Manchester United was in fourth place out of 12 teams, and James required no time to acclimate to top-flight football, posting six goals in the league and adding two more in cup competitions.
After proving her ability in Manchester, it was time for James to come home to London. When Chelsea Women’s offers you an opportunity to play for the club, they’re hard to turn down. Chelsea Manager Emma Hayes is arguably the best coach in women’s football and the club has emerged as a perennial league-contender under her reign, winning seven of the last nine top-flight titles.
James has played a role in the last two title-winning campaigns. In 2021-22, she did not start a league match, as she had to fight for a place in Chelsea’s hyper-competitive squad, but the younger James improved massively in her second season.
She did not start week-in, week-out for Chelsea in the 2022-23 season that just wrapped, but that’s more a reflection of the Blues’ ridiculous depth than a knock on James’ quality; Hayes rotates her starting XIs frequently to give her top players a roughly equal share of minutes.
James started 15 of the 22 Women’s Super League matches, coming off the bench in an additional three games. She scored five goals and provided two assists, her best combined goals and assists record in the top flight to date.
Opposing defenders simply do not want to see the ball at James’ feet. She offers more of a goal threat when she plays on the left wing, where she can then cut inside to shoot on her stronger right foot, but James can do damage from either side of the pitch.
At nearly 5-foot-9-inches, James uses her size to her advantage, shielding the ball well and striding past defenders with a tight dribbling style. She is one of the rare attacking players who appears to paralyze the defense when the ball arrives at her feet because she can hurt teams in myriad ways.
When she decides to run at defenders, James usually wins. According to FBref, she averages 2.55 successful take-ons per match — in the 94th percentile among her positional peers — meaning she dribbles past two or more defenders most games.
But James is also a smart passer who keeps the ball circulating when an opportunity to drive forward doesn’t present itself. Her 79.2% pass completion rate ranks in the 99th percentile. James isn’t afraid to get stuck in with a tackle when her team loses the ball either, with 1.68 tackles per 90 minutes.
Chelsea has plenty of quality attackers in the team. Sam Kerr scored 12 goals and had five assists in 2022-23 for the Blues. Guro Reiten, who plays James’ preferred left wing position, just played perhaps the best season of her career, with nine goals and 11 assists in the WSL. No player has a guaranteed place in this Chelsea side, so James will have to keep improving to justify her continued inclusion. But at 21 years old, she may have the highest ceiling of them all.
Look back to the list of elite family duos I provided in the first line. You’ll notice that all of them are the same gender as their siblings, and as a result played in the same competitions. Lauren and Reece James have an opportunity to stand out in this regard; the success of one sibling does not diminish the accomplishments of the other.
In that list, you can easily name which sibling achieved more than the other. Serena Williams won 16 more Major titles in tennis than Venus did. Eli Manning might have as many Super Bowl rings as his brother, but Peyton was the NFL MVP five times, something Eli never accomplished. Pau Gasol won back-to-back titles with the Lakers and made six All-Star appearances, while Marc has one ring and only three All-Star jerseys framed in his house.
By the time their careers end, Lauren and Reece James could have scarily similar resumes. Over 100 England caps each? You bet. Multiple English and Champions League titles? It’s very possible.
If both James siblings stay largely injury-free in the next decade, they will lead their Chelsea and England’s men’s and women’s teams to the pinnacle of European football.
Jack Hallinan is a rising junior writing about the top wonderkids in men’s and women’s soccer in his column, “Rising Ballers,” which runs every other Wednesday.