After a three-month look forward to stressed followers because the conclusion of the group stage, Europe’s high golf equipment lastly return to continental motion this week because the Girls’s Champions League quarter-finals get underneath means. The principle query on all people’s thoughts between now and the ultimate in Lisbon on 24 Could is: can anyone cease Barcelona?
The defending champions are bidding to achieve a fifth consecutive last and win the title for the third yr in a row, however they didn’t full the group stage with an ideal document – solely Chelsea and Lyon did – and offered a uncommon glimpse of their mortality with an away defeat in opposition to Manchester Metropolis in October.
With that in thoughts, and in view of the relative power of the groups within the final eight, the battle to achieve Estádio José Alvalade has a wide-open really feel to it, particularly with each Chelsea and Lyon presently unbeaten of their home leagues. Throw into that blend the renewal of previous rivalries, as Wolfsburg meet Barcelona in a repeat of the 2023 last, plus added parts for unpredictability after the appointment of Nick Cushing as Manchester Metropolis’s interim head coach, and all of it provides to the recipe for 4 tantalisingly poised quarter-final ties.
England is the primary nation to have three golf equipment taking part in within the quarter‑finals of this competitors in the identical season, and a minimum of one is assured to progress, as Manchester Metropolis and Chelsea go head-to-head for Acts II and IV of their ongoing four-part drama. On Saturday they performed the primary of their 4 consecutive conferences throughout three competitions, when Chelsea had been 2-1 winners to raise the English Girls’s League Cup, and so they even have a league assembly on the Etihad Stadium on Sunday sandwiched in between these two legs of their European quarter-final.
Cushing, who led Metropolis to the semi-finals in again‑to‑again campaigns in 2016-17 and 2017‑18 in his earlier spell in cost, has mentioned his aspect’s show of their defeat on Saturday gave him perception that they will beat Sonia Bompastor’s staff, who’re but to lose a sport underneath her administration. Each groups stay with out long-term damage absentees, however Metropolis had a scare when their high scorer Khadija Shaw was substituted “feeling her hamstring”, whereas Chelsea’s big-money January signings, Naomi Girma and Keira Walsh, missed the sport and are each doubts.
In the meantime, regardless of not having performed a match since 2023 due to her anterior cruciate ligament damage, Sam Kerr was added to Chelsea’s Champions League squad for the knockout rounds, though it might be a shock if she was deemed able to function
Arsenal, who’re within the reverse half of the draw, will likely be hoping to hitch one in all their WSL rivals within the semi-finals, however they don’t face a straightforward activity as they face a Actual Madrid aspect simply seven factors behind Barcelona on the high of the Spanish league. Actual may discipline harmful attacking-midfield weapons within the type of Linda Caicedo, Athenea del Castillo and the Scotland midfielder Caroline Weir, who performed for Arsenal greater than a decade in the past as a young person.
Arsenal gained the competitors in 2007 whereas Actual are but to achieve the semi-finals and the Madrid head coach, Alberto Toril, mentioned on Monday: “I count on a detailed tie between two groups which might be doing very well. My gamers might want to familiarize yourself with the important thing moments of every leg. We now have to take the sport to the place it fits us, beginning with possession, being properly positioned in order to not afford them an excessive amount of area, stretching the sport out and all the time being in it.”
The winner of that Arsenal-Actual tie will face both Bayern Munich or the document eight-time champions Lyon within the subsequent spherical. Alexander Straus, Bayern’s head coach, hopes his staff’s defensive document – conceding simply 12 objectives in 17 Frauen Bundesliga video games this season – can get them over the road. “We now have the very best defensive document within the Bundesliga,” he mentioned. “It’s not going to be straightforward, they’ve superb particular person gamers, [but] we are going to attempt to defend in opposition to them one of the best ways we are able to and do what we consider will work.”
The highest scorers within the competitors to this point this season, although, are Barcelona, who scored 26 objectives of their six group-stage video games and have recorded an ominous 93 objectives of their home league, 17 of which have been scored by the previous Wolfsburg ahead Ewa Pajor since her change between the 2 golf equipment final summer season.
Pajor faces her former membership on Wednesday and the German aspect – two-time Champions League winners – play at residence within the first leg of the tie, with the winners assembly both Manchester Metropolis or Chelsea within the semi-finals.
Because the competitors prepares for a change in format to an 18-team league part subsequent season, which can imply extra common conferences between many of those main groups earlier within the competitors, no matter occurs over the subsequent 10 days, these quarter-finals ought to be actually particular.
#Womens #Champions #League #quarterfinals #cease #Barcelona