Emma Hayes’ Champions League dream remains alive. Chelsea’s 1-0 home defeat to Barcelona in their semi-final first leg provided enough positives and a narrow enough margin for the second leg at Camp Nou to look slightly less daunting.
More than 700 days since the 2021 final, where Chelsea succumbed to a humiliating 4-0 defeat to Barça, there was a chance for a little redemption at Stamford Bridge. Of the starting XI that played in that bruising final in Gothenburg, six were on the team sheet to start in London – with the injured Fran Kirby and Millie Bright absent and Pernille Harder and Sophie Ingle on the bench – of those who are still at the club.
Then, Guro Reiten and Erin Cuthbert came off the bench in the second half, but they are both now fixtures of Chelsea’s starting line-up. There was surprise at the omission of the potent Lauren James, who began on the bench, with Hayes choosing Jelena Cankovic over the England star perhaps to provide more defensive cover to right-back Ève Périsset – Chelsea were undone on the flanks in 2021.
Two years ago, it took 33 seconds for Barcelona to take the lead and, at Stamford Bridge, there was another early sucker punch. This time the Blues held out for three minutes and 11 seconds, with Caroline Graham Hansen cutting inside from the right, shifting past Melanie Leupolz and lashing powerfully beyond a diving Ann-Katrin Berger before Cuthbert could close her down. It had been a wicked deflection off Leupolz that looped over Berger and gave Barcelona the lead in that final before Chelsea crumbled, conceding three more by the 36th minute. This time, though, they held it together.
This time too, Chelsea were an arguably weaker side – without Harder, Kirby and the departed Ji So-yun in the starting XI. The fluid football that has been the team’s hallmark in recent years has been less present this season, with players coming in and out of the team to disrupt the consistency and rhythm of that style of play. However, that has, counterintuitively, had its advantages. After Chelsea’s battling 1-0 FA Cup semi-final defeat of Aston Villa on Sunday, Hayes spoke to that.
“The team tell me this, they like it like this, tight squad, lots of opportunities, dig in, everyone’s got to fight to dig the result out. We, as a team, seem to do really well in these periods,” she said, before pointing to the injury-time leveller and then penalty defeat of Lyon, eight-time European champions, as a key moment for the dressing room.
Barcelona may have taken an early lead, but the ball hitting the back of the net had little impact on Chelsea’s belief that they could cause an upset. While they were ready to relinquish possession, Hayes’ side also threatened. Their best chances came from Sam Kerr linking up with Reiten. The first saw the Australian head towards her teammate, who brought the ball down and laid it back to Kerr before the forward’s strike powered off the upper arm of a defender and trickled towards the far post for Sandra Paños to gather. Again, Kerr flicked on for Reiten around the half-hour mark and the Norwegian beat Paños but Lucy Bronze, the Barça right-back, got her body in the way to force a corner.
At the break the signs of Chelsea’s progress over the last two years were clear, not least in the three-goal difference between the scorelines. Hayes hooked Cankovic for James at the break as the home team went on the hunt. As in the first half, it was end-to-end, with Jonatan Giráldez’s side happy to shift down a gear and Chelsea looking to catch them on the break.
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There was concern for Sarina Wiegman, the watching England manager, past the hour mark when Bronze limped off with a knee injury, unable to put weight on her leg, a day after Leah Williamson’s knee injury was confirmed as an ACL rupture.
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With Chelsea desperate to take a goal to Camp Nou, Harder was thrown into the mix for the first time this year alongside Johanna Rytting Kaneryd and Jessie Fleming. Meanwhile, Asisat Oshoala, who has 24 goals this season, was among the Barcelona substitutes to enter the fray after missing the game against Atlético Madrid at the weekend. They could not find the leveller against a possession-heavy Barcelona, but a gutsy performance will leave the underdogs relishing the reverse fixture next Thursday.
