Sonia Bompastor accepted that her Chelsea team had been simply “not good enough” after they were taught a lesson by a technically superior Barcelona side who nowhold a commanding positionin their Women’s Champions League semi-final.
Chelsea were beaten for only the second time in all competitions since Bompastor took over last summer but in sunny Catalonia they were outclassed by the strongest team they have faced in her tenure so far.
“Barcelona is maybe the best team in Europe,” Bompastor said. “I think when the result was 2-1 we were not in a bad situation, but the last 10 minutes were not good enough. As a team we made too many mistakes tonight to have a better result. The version we showed tonight was not good enough.
“When you play Barcelona, you just need to be brave on the ball, being able to hold the ball under pressure, and being able also in the physical aspects to win your duels, and just sometimes in your football brain to be smarter, to anticipate things. I think we played with too many reactions, instead of being proactive in the game.”
Chelsea are trying to reach the European final for only the second time and could still win a quadruple of major trophies this term in Bompastor’s first season in charge, but they will now need an unlikely looking comeback and the performance of their lives if they are to have any chance of overturning this deficit in London.
The scoreline could have been worse for Chelsea but for Hannah Hampton’s early penalty save, at a time when the tie was level at 0-0, when the former Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas was denied from the spot. That kept the home side at bay but not for long, with Putellas classily slipping a through ball into the path of Ewa Pajor for the Poland striker to open the scoring.
Chelsea improved defensively after the break but were undone by a masterful team goal as Barcelona made it 2-0 with a move that involved 18 passes before Clàudia Pina turned in from inside the six-yard box. Pina herself had played the 13th pass of Barcelona’s flowing move from deep inside her own half before sprinting upfield to turn home the cross.
Sandy Baltimore’s crisp strike into the far corner with 16 minutes remaining offered Bompastor’s team a glimmer of hope to bring the scoreline back to 2-1, but a far-post header from an unmarked Irene Paredes restored Barcelona’s two-goal advantage soon after. Pina then struck again from close range in the 90th minute to severely hamper Chelsea’s hopes for the second leg, and make the hosts’ advantage on the scoreboard more accurately reflect their dominance.
Caroline Graham Hansen, who had been a doubt for this first leg after missing Barcelona’s training session on Saturday because of illness, was named among the starting side and the Norway winger began the game impressively, giving the Chelsea left-back Baltimore plenty to think about in the early stages. A shot by Graham Hansen was deflected wide, after the hosts’ holding midfielder Patricia Guijarro had seen a low effort deflected into the arms of Hampton, while Chelsea struggled to hold on to the ball long enough to mount many meaningful attacks in the opening exchanges.
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Barcelona’s early pressure eventually led to a penalty when Nathalie Björn handled Paredes’s header and the Hungarian referee Katalin Kulcsár correctly awarded the spot-kick after consulting the screen following a VAR check. Putellas opted to send her strike straight down the middle and the England goalkeeper Hampton, who had dived slightly to Putellas’s right, made the save comfortably with her feet.
That proved to be one of the only moments of celebration for the travelling Chelsea fans and ultimately this was a game which highlighted Barcelona’s superior skill as they appear to be on course to knock Chelsea out at the semi-final stage of this competition for the third successive season.
Bompastor refused to concede the tie, though, trying to hold on to some hope for a return-leg comeback: “It will be difficult but, in football, you need to believe. We want to go into the second leg trying to win the game and, in football, anything can happen.” The defender Lucy Bronze told TNT Sports: “I think we can do it.”
Barcelona are aiming to reach their fifth consecutive final and lift the European title for the fourth time in those five seasons, having started their current run of dominance in this competition with a 4-0 win against Chelsea – who have never won this title – in the 2021 final in Gothenburg, Sweden.
This first-leg meeting was similarly one-sided to that showdown four years ago. But Paredes was urging caution when telling the Catalan television channel TV3: “It’s not done. We are happy with how we played, but we have to go there [Stamford Bridge] and play well as well.”