From Camp Nou to Turin: Barça’s path to its third final

You can already say with your mouth wide open: Barcelona will play their third Champions League final in four years. she has made it leaving Wolfsburg in the lurch, one of those ogres that tortured him when the Blaugrana team was still preparing its leap in quality to rub shoulders with the greats of Europe. But already since 2020 and the famous ‘No hi ha distance’ (‘there is no distance’) by Alexia Putellas, the culés eat at the table of the elders, The 2-0 loss on German territory in the second leg didn’t matter much (5-3 on aggregate).

Now they are the rival to beat. Current champion of the Champions League, Barça started the 2021-22 edition framed in group C, along with Arsenal, Hoffenheim and HB Koge.

With overalls on and without underestimating any of their rivals in this new competition format, the Blaugrana signed a flawless group stage. Not a single speck on a road that was closed with six wins in six games to add 18 points, with 24 goals for and one againstmarked by the Arsenal player Maanum.

In this way, Barça reached a quarter-final whose draw provided for them to face Real Madrid. The new ‘Clásico’ of women’s football has come to stay. The Whites managed to put the Catalans on the ropes in the first leg, leading the scoreboard for 45 minutes, but in minute 53 everything changed.

Hansen was knocked down in the area by Olga Carmona, who had scored the 1-0, and Alexia equalized from eleven meters. Pina jumped onto the pitch to revolutionize the match and made it 1-2 before another Alexia will score to close the match. And for many, the tie.

But that was yet to be seenhe Camp Nou opened to welcome 91,553 who broke the world attendance record to a women’s soccer match. The result was a day for history, with intensity, emotions, great goals and a new display from Alexia that ended 5-2.

Barça was planted in the semifinals and the coconut arrived. Woflsburg, a team that had never scored a goal and against which he was eliminated in this same round in 2020, the year of the pandemic, in a single match.

However, this culé team does not shake the pulse. Not even before the 91,648 people who broke the record itself set a few weeks earlier. Barça’s curse against the Germans was closed with a hand in the first leg and a pass to the third Champions League final in four years on the return… As the Blaugrana president, Joan Laporta, said: “History will speak of you.”