“This team has known how to come back in more difficult moments than this. If we did it in Eindhoven in 45 minutes, here in 90, why not?” Aitana Bonmatí asked herself in London. And the locker room is convinced that the team will be able to turn around Cuthbert’s goal in Montjuïc and will qualify for the final on May 25 in San Mamés. Jonatan Giráldez agrees with the player that today’s game “is not the most difficult match” they have faced: “The challenge in the last Champions League final was greater, we had to score three goals in the second half.” “This is just another challenge,” said the coach in the run-up to the momentous duel at Stamford Bridge: “We don’t have to do anything exceptional, just create more chances and deserve to win the game.”
The precedents do not accompany the Catalan club, which has been forced to come back on six occasions and has achieved qualification only once. Lyon, PSG, Wolsfburg, Bristol and Arsenal have been Barça’s executioners throughout their twelve years in Europe. They only managed to turn around an adverse score in 2018 against BIIK-Kazygurt. The Blaugrana paid dearly for the ordeal of a long and complicated trip to Kazakhstan, but they came back in the Miniestadi. Today, Barça can achieve something it has never achieved before, come back from a tie away from home.
It has not been an easy week after suffering the first defeat of the season against the English team. A hard blow for a team that had not lost in its fiefdom for five years. These players are not used to being behind on the scoreboard either. Something that not only happened against Chelsea. On Wednesday, the modest Levante Las Planas even took the lead on two occasions, although the Catalan derby ended up being decided in favor of the Blaugrana team.
Today, with a much more recognizable eleven, Giráldez’s team are forced to beat the blue team, who will defend Erin Cuthbert’s goal tooth and nail. “We will play this game with our heads and we will have to be perfect if we want to pass,” Emma Hayes warned yesterday, who was once again surrendering to the Blaugrana: “They are the best team in the world, I have said it millions of times, they can hurt you badly. a thousand ways.” The Chelsea coach, who will play her last game at Stamford Bridge before leaving the club at the end of the season, revealed that she will have Bright, Mjelde and Bjorn back for the match and confessed that she had made “some changes” for the second leg: “We are ready for the second part. We have only done half of a tie that will last, at least, 180 minutes,” she said before appealing to the more than 35,000 fans who will be in the stands: “I really want to see the public, we will need them.”
It will not be a comfortable match for Barcelona. Chelsea will look for a long outcome, with constant loss of time and trying to cut the pace of the game. A style that Aitana Bonmatí criticized after the first leg, calling it a “dirty game.” Emma Hayes responded yesterday to the Ballon d’Or: “They have earned the status of the best team in Europe and they can say what they want. I think she didn’t mean much of what she said, I know she respects the rival, but in the world of clickbait the press turned it into a headline.”
Yesterday Aitana avoided entering into controversy about Chelsea’s waste of time: “It is something that does not depend on us. The rival prepares the match in the way he sees fit; It may be a strategy, but I would like to focus on our game, and if the situation arises again, we will already be warned because we will have already experienced similar situations, and that is what the referee is for.”
There is no anxiety in the locker room. They are aware of the mistakes made and are confident. And despite the cold water that it was for all Barcelona fans to suffer a defeat in the first leg, Chelsea’s advantage is only one goal and it will be difficult for a scenario like this to be repeated. The one in Montjuïc was the first game in which the Blaugrana failed to score since April 2022 and it will hardly be repeated. “We have analyzed well how we played the first leg and we know what we have to do. We have complete confidence. You don’t have to do many different things. We are a team that goes out to win, not to speculate. We don’t know how to play any other way,” Aitana said.
