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Winners
The Ladies’s Tremendous League. Final season each Arsenal and Chelsea struggled within the Champions League group stage, with Chelsea falling brief and Arsenal scraping via. This 12 months, Arsenal topped a gaggle which included reigning European champions, Lyon and the Italian title-winners, Juventus. In the meantime, Chelsea went undefeated and scored 19 objectives on their option to successful Group A forward of Paris Saint-Germain and Actual Madrid.
Has the hole closed between English sides and Europe’s elite? Emma Hayes believes so. The Chelsea supervisor says: “Generally we simply assume: ‘Oh there’s funding into the sport in England due to this fact they’re going to compete,’ with out actually recognising what expertise truly means. Two years in the past, once we had been within the closing, that was the beginning of [our journey], however we weren’t prepared. I believe English groups are at a greater degree to compete due to the calls for of our league, the standard of our squad depth.”
Roma’s development from Group B in second place behind Wolfsburg isn’t any much less spectacular. Roma sit prime of Serie A and are trying to finish Juventus’s five-year dominance of Italian ladies’s soccer. Nonetheless, with Chelsea, Arsenal or Barcelona up subsequent their journey will seemingly finish on the quarter-final stage.
Losers
Juventus have been terribly unfortunate with the attract each years the group stage format has operated. Final 12 months they had been in a gaggle with the two-time Champions League winners Wolfsburg and the 2021 runners-up Chelsea, and narrowly managed to progress on the latter’s expense. This season attracts at house and away to Lyon, the Champions League holders and eight-time winners, and a 1-1 draw at house to Arsenal had been was not sufficient to progress. If Arsenal and Chelsea are a step behind groups with Champions League pedigree equivalent to Lyon, Wolfsburg, Bayern Munich and PSG, then Juventus are one other step behind that.
Arsenal will be categorised as each winners and losers, as a result of whereas they certified for the knockout stage, the lack of Vivianne Miedema to an ACL harm within the crew’s 1-0 defeat to Lyon is a giant blow. It additionally highlights an issue blighting Europe’s finest groups with Miedema, Beth Mead, Ellie Carpenter, Catarina Macario, Alexia Putellas and Marie-Antoinette Katoto simply a number of the gamers lacking from the Champions League as a result of comparable accidents.
Standout gamers
The absence of Putellas, the back-to-back Ballon d’Or winner, has completed little to disrupt Barcelona’s momentum and Aitana Bonmatí has been an enormous a part of that. Final season she scored 4 en path to the ultimate, which Barcelona misplaced 3-1 to Lyon. This 12 months she has already bagged 5 on prime of 4 assists. Wolfsburg’s Ewa Pajor is the main goalscorer with seven in six video games, with Benfica’s Cloé Lacasse, Bonmati and Sam Kerr all on 5. Lacasse additionally scored twice in qualifying, nevertheless it was the Canada ahead’s three objectives in two video games towards Rosengård and strikes in defeats to Barcelona and Bayern Munich that lit up Benfica’s marketing campaign.
Crowds
Barcelona twice broke the attendance report for girls’s soccer final season. Video games towards Actual Madrid and Wolfsburg attracted 91,553 and 91,600 respectively to the Camp Nou within the knockout stage. Within the group stage 163,094 followers attended video games in complete. This season that determine has elevated by 62% to 264,267. That has been helped by extra golf equipment internet hosting Champions League video games of their important stadiums and higher promotion. One other issue is the thrill of final summer time’s Euros driving curiosity and better visibility of the competitors, with each sport broadcast.