Key events
Eve Perisset of Chelsea, with her accreditation lanyard prominently positioned, takes a look at the pitch at the Groupama Stadium in the lead-up to kick-off.
Hopes, dreams and fears for tonight?
Quoted on the Chelsea website, Emma Hayes said: “We know Lyon are a top side. Earlier in the season [when they were beaten 5-1 by Arsenal] they were missing a lot of players. That’s not the case now. They have a lot of their experienced players back.
“There are certainly things from Arsenal’s performance that night that reminded us of some of the things we repeated in the pre-season game against Lyon, but this is a very different game and Lyon are at a very different stage than they were earlier in the season … “We understand there are no away goals,’ added Hayes. “I’m an advocate of that. For us, we just have to keep producing performances like we have so far in Europe, and we’re going to see two very good teams in Europe.”
Last night, Arsenal fell to a 1-0 defeat by Bayern Munich, but it’s all to play for in the second leg:
Elsewhere Barcelona beat Roma 1-0 in their first leg:
“They have amazing players, but we do as well.”
Melanie Leupolz of Chelsea adds to the big-game atmosphere by chiming in with one of the great pre-match cliches.
‘We want to use the chance to play on this stage to show our mentality, the character of our team.’ 💬@Melanie_Leupolz looks ahead to tonight’s #UWCL quarter-final. ⤵️
— Chelsea FC Women (@ChelseaFCW) March 22, 2023
“JOUR DE MATCH”
It just sounds better than match day, doesn’t it?
Sarah Rendell reports for us before this one:
The Chelsea manager, Emma Hayes, has told her players they cannot win their Women’s Champions League quarter-final in the first leg against Lyon at the Groupama Stadium on Wednesday, but they can “absolutely lose it”.
Teams
No fewer than seven changes are made by Chelsea’s Hayes following the weekend FA Cup win at Reading. One of those sees Erin Cuthbert, fit to start having missed the last three matches through injury, come back into the starting lineup for Jessie Fleming.
Lyon: Endler; Carpenter, Gilles, Renard, Morroni, Damaris, Horan, Däbritz, Marozsán, Le Sommer, Cascarino. Substitutes: Bacha, Majri, Hegerberg, Van de Donk, Sombath, Cayman, Bruun, Benyahia, Becho, Malard, Belhadj
Chelsea: Berger; Bright, Ingle, Carter, Leupolz, James; Reiten, Perisset, Kerr, Cuthbert, Buchanan. Substitutes: Musovic, Eriksson, Fleming, Mjelde, Johanna Kaneryd, Charles, Abdullina, Cankovic, Orman
Preamble
“I don’t spend my time thinking about revenge. I look at life as lessons and learnings.”
The Chelsea manager, Emma Hayes, has said she is not aiming for retribution this evening following her team’s Champions League semi-final exit at the hands of Lyon in 2019. A week is a long time in football, let alone four years, so it’s easy to believe what Hayes says. Chelsea have come a long way since then, too, and have grown into a team with the kind of status and ability that has seen them lose just one match in all competitions this term.
Lyon are the defending champions but their progress to this stage of the competition has been somewhat less serene: it wasn’t so long ago they suffered a 5-1 defeat by Arsenal in the group stage. But the show is very much back on the road now and the last time they failed to win a match, in fact, was the stalemate against Juventus at the end of that group stage in December. So both teams are in fine form.
Unstoppable force v immovable object? This could very well be a cracker.
Kick-off: 5.45pm
