After 18 years, Arsenal are back in the biggest game in women’s European football with a dream to end their long wait for continental glory. They face the holders,the favourites and the much-revered Barcelona, who are aiming to win the Champions League for a third consecutive season on a picture-perfect weekend in Lisbon.
Strolling along tree-lined paths through the Portuguese capital’s sun-kissed Parque Eduardo VII, as a group of Barcelona fans cross paths with two Arsenal supporters wearing full red-and-white kit and exchange a few friendly quips about Saturday’s final, it is hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for the 3,467 attendees who saw Arsenal lift the Uefa Women’s Cup – as it was known in 2007 – in the somewhat less glamorous surroundings of Boreham Wood FC’s Meadow Park. In those days, the competition concluded with a two-legged home-and-away final. Arsenal followed up their 1-0 away win against the Swedish club Umeå – thanks to an Alex Scott scorcher – with a goalless draw to deliver what remains the greatest moment in the club’s history.
The modern, 50,000-capacity José Alvalade Stadium, which sold out on Friday, offers a venue worthy of these sides’ pedigree. Arsenal’s supporters will be in the minority, with approximately 5,000 believed to have made the journey from London, compared with the 30,000-plus reportedly arriving from Spain. Yet Arsenal have a huge community behind them – a vast number of hand-written messages of good luck from staff and players from across the club have been pinned on walls in the corridors of their training ground.
Arsenal are underdogs but they have been the comeback queens of this season’s competition, not only through their second-leg fightbacks to overturn deficitsagainst Real Madridand Lyonin the quarter-finals and semi-finals respectively but also through their resurgence during the group stage, when they recovered from a heavy away defeat against Bayern Munich – under their former head coach Jonas Eidevall – to qualify for the knockout rounds as group winners.
Arsenal’s European journey began in the first qualifying round, where they overpowered Rangers. Further qualifying-stage victories over Rosenborg and Häcken followed, making them the first team in Women’s Champions League’s history to progress from the first qualifying round to the final. In many ways, their whole season has felt like one big comeback, after their troubled start to the campaign and the resignation of Eidevall in October to the appointment of Renée Slegers as his replacement.
Saturday’s final is Barcelona’s 100th women’s European fixture. Their first came against Arsenal, in the 2012-13 season. The Gunners ran out 3-0 winners against a team that included a young Alexia Putellas. “Arsenal are a great team with great players and a great coach,” said the Spain midfielder on Friday. “They are in the final for a reason. They eliminated Real Madrid and scored four against Lyon, but if we are in our best version then many things can turn out well. We trust our match plan.
“Despite having three Champions Leagues, it doesn’t mean we will win tomorrow. It doesn’t matter how many finals. It is true, we know what we have done, but it means nothing. The next goal is tomorrow’s final. We will try to prepare it in the best possible way and do our best. We hope it ends with a title.”
Barcelona go into the final having won their sixth consecutive Spanish title and the Arsenal left-back Katie McCabe is full of praise for the defending European champions “They’ve got so much quality. They’re so good with the ball,” she said. “Intricate passes, movement, they’re fluid in their positioning.
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“We have to respect their qualities and their strengths, but also we need to understand what we have as well and how good we can be going forward, how we control the tempo of games and our quality on the ball as well. For the neutral, I think it will be a really enjoyable spectacle.”
It is ominous for Arsenal fans that Chelsea – undefeated domestically when winning a treble this season – lost 8-2 on aggregate to Barcelona in the semi-finals. Nonetheless, Arsenal’s scalp of the record eight-time winners Lyon should provide them with hope going into the biggest match in the history of the women’s team.
“For me it was a surprise that Arsenal beat Lyon but they deserved to be in the final,” said Barcelona midfielder and Ballon d’Or winner Aitana Bonmatí. “They scored four goals against one of the best teams in Europe. We didn’t score four goals against Lyon, ever. Although it’s a new rival that has not been in the final for years, it is not an easy match.”