It seems that Hegerberg came to work today. I’m afraid this is going to be a slaughter. Poor Barça girls. I hope this doesn’t affect their confidence too much. I think I’m going to watch a movie. Congrats to Olimpique Lyon.
Barça had their first CK at 43', and from it they got their best chance in this whole first half, an header from Alexia Putellas that went high on the crossbar by a few inches. A few minutes after that, the whistle: Half Time OL-Barça 4-0. shots (on target): 9(6) to 4(1) Reading the names on OL bench can be an interesting exercise: Bacha, Kumagai, Cascarino, Buchanan, Jaimes, Simon... Most of these players would be starters in any club at any level and in fact most of them are starters in their respective National Teams. No contest.
Looks like it's former England NT member Rachel Yankey, now 39 and retired from the game. 2nd half started: no changes, apparently.
At the hour mark, many Barcelona's players look quite tired already: I smell other goals for OL in the final minutes...
Meanwhile, at 63', Van de Sanden out (applauded by all of the stadium) and Cascarino in. A minute later she picks up a foul and creates a FK in dangerous zone for OL. Nothing ensues, but when you sub out one of the best wingers in the world and put in another one of the best wingers in the world, there is something quite unbalanced about the match...
67': Like Martens adjusts the ball, has the clearest chance of the game for Barcelona and... she misses! Some days, nothing goes the right way.
Another example: at 71', Wales' captain Jessica Fishlock is out, Japan's captain Saki Kumagai is in. (Japanese pride ).
I had missed a double change at 69' for Barcelona: Andressa Alves (Brazilian NT) and Asisat Oshoala (Nigerian NT) in, Aitana Bonmati (Spanish NT) and Tony Duggan (England NT) out. Not a bad line-up either, after all, but not at OL level. Later, Oshaola would want a foul to be called on her, but the referee doesn't agree at all.
From UEFA Women Champions' League website : "Saki Kumagai becomes the first Asian to 50 appearances in this competition (and third non-European)".
80', Pereira out, Van der Gragt in (Dutch fans will be happy to see her on the pitch, since she has to re-gain her best fitness for the upcoming World Cup ). A minute later, last substitution for OL also: a DF in (very young Selma Bacha, 18 yo), a FW out (Eugénie Le Sommer: 30 years today; so she's definitely not going to score on her birthday ).
At 88', very good pass by Martens in the box for Oshoala, who puts it in for a consolation 4-1 for Barcelona. First Nigerian goal in a Women's Champions' League final ever?
Final Time 4-1. Not the total carnage I was envisioning after the first half-hour, but of course OL didn't need to push in 2nd half, and no player actually wanted to risk an injury at less than a month from the beginning of the World Cup. Well, OL showed once again that they dominate Europe. And Hegerberg justified the Ballon d'Or. In my opinion, anyway, the player of the game, despite Hegerberg hat-trick, was Van de Sanden: it looks like she has a jet engine with afterburner; at times, you just feel like having her on the pitch should be considered illegal for a team.
It's interesting that Van de Sanden started today--and played well, as she usually does--when she did not start either match in the semifinal tie against Chelsea, and I think Cascarino has generally started more (or even most?) games this year--I'd have to check. Yes, that does give one an idea of Lyon's amazing depth--and of course Van de Sanden was the hero of last year's crazy final (was it last year or two years ago?) when Lyon scored four goals in extra time after Wolfsburg opened the scoring in extra time. I didn't think Barca would challenge Lyon as Chelsea did; can't explain why exactly, but I thought Chelsea played about as well against Lyon as anyone has for a couple of years. I wanted to watch this match, tuned in at the 6' mark and Lyon was up by a goal already, watched a few more minutes and it was 2-0, and I quit watching as it was apparent it would not be competitive. Barca's defending was almost amateurish today in the first half--and the team should be pissed at Hamraoui for missing the match because of her petulant play in the semifinal that got her red-carded. Without her physical presence as holding mid, Barcelona was in trouble--and let's face it, the Spanish side simply doesn't have enough overall talent to compete with Lyon. The Spanish playing style will go only go so far--and the team was very tentative today and did what they absolutely could not do, which is give up an early goal, which destroys your confidence--especially when you're an underdog already. I'm hoping Arsenal can take down the OL beast next year!
It was last year, but since this is the fourth consecutive Champions' League for OL, the confusion is understandable. 2017's final was the one vs PSG ending with a super-long penalty shooutout, that was decided by Sarah Bouhaddi who saved the PK taken by the opponent GK and scored hers.
Today's game, sadly, was over almost before it started. Giving up two goals in the first, what, 12 minutes against a superior team pretty much spells doom.
Read on Twitter about Panos' poor play but I thought Bouhaddi's goal was more embarrassing than any of the four Panos gave up. I just catch highlights but how were the gks?
Barca were appaling defensively. They concede the same goals again and again but make no tactical adjustment? What were they thinking. They competed in the second half, but it was too late. That Duggan early missed proved very costly in the end.
Actually, if it's true that Oshoala basically nutmegged her, I don't think Bouhaddi had much she could have done to save that goal, since Oshoala had basically freed herself in the center of the box. It was almost like a PK, at that distance, and Bouhaddi couldn't do much more than coming out and try to cover as much of the goal as she could: could have she done it better? Sure, but let's not forget it was also 88' on 4-0 and she probably didn't feel any particular sense of urgency: I wouldn't read too much into it. I watched the whole game: to answer to your question regarding how the GKs were, the best answer about Bouhaddi would be: "Who knows?". That goal at 88' was basically the only shot on target by Barcelona in the whole game! Previously, Duggan had shot wide at the beginning of the game, Alexia had grazed the crossbar with an header from CK at the end of first half and Martens had shot wide in the 2nd half from the short-distance, after having even had the time to trap and adjust the ball. Would Bouhaddi have saved any of these shots, had they been on target? She looked decently placed, was following the actions and reacted well in each of these circumstances (even in the last one, when Martens was basically free: it wasn't her fault but her defense's), but no-one can say if she would have been able to save. So I must confess that, although I watched the whole game, I couldn't say how Bouhaddi played: she almost didn't have to play at all! About Panos (by the way, is she the starting GK for Spanish NT? I don't follow the team enough to be sure ), for sure she was partially or completely at fault for at least half of the goals (the 4th one in particular, but she didn't look bright in the action of the 1st one also). On the other hand... This. Barça's defense was so clueless that Panos couldn't really do much about it. When, as a GK, you repeatedly have opponent FWs alone and free in front of you at a few meters from your goal, what do you do? Her performance is difficult to evaluate for the opposite reason as Bouhaddi's: at times it looked like it was target practice for OL, and Panos actually looked like those GKs who just have to look at their team-mates while they sling shots to them in a training session. There's no doubt that, unlike Bouhaddi, Panos actually had a lot of decisions to make, and she made a good number of them quite poorly, but frankly there wasn't much she could do to stop OL, without her team-mates' help.
Especially Andrea Pereira played very badly defensively. On the other hand, why does Duggan still start over Oshoala? Toni has proven to be unable to finish anything one-on-one with the goalie time and time again. Asisat has scored a goal every 65 minutes for Barca...
If fact, after her goal, the pouting expression and body language from Oshoala seemed to say just that: "Look: I can score. What this game could have been if I had started?". Maybe a little conceited by her part, but on the other hand it's true that she looked more dangerous in 20 minutes than Duggan had looked for the rest of the game.
Did Oshoala start in any big games this year? She didn't start in either game against Bayern Munich. The fact that she doesn't start is very questionable, IMO. Duggan is a fine player but Oshoala is an incredible athlete who probably should have been playing 70 minutes a game for Barcelona. Of course it's easier to score late in a game when your opponent is up by four, but she is a racehorse on the pitch.
The fact is: Barcelona is trying to follow OL's route, not being quite there yet but anyway filling the roster with international stars who can't possibly be on the pitch at the same time. During the final, I had mentioned how ridiculous OL's bench did read: Bacha, Cascarino, Kumagai, Buchanan, Simon... You could make a winning team using the half of OL's roster that's kept sitting on the bench or on the standings! Barcelona starts having the same problem, although not with the same proportions: Oshoala would probably start, and be the star of the team, in 90% of the teams on earth. But in the women's football, if just a handful of clubs raid most of the international good players, then they can only start 11 of them every game anyway, not more.
I'm only just catching up now, having been busy all weekend.... How many of Lyon's goals came through the area that Hamraoui would have been playing? I assume not enough to change the overall result, but I wonder if the match would have seemed more even without that red card carryover. We know Barca played Lyon close last year.
If Hamroui keeps playing as a Central/Holding Midfielder for Barcelona as she was used to do in the past, I'd say about 0%, since basically all of OL's goals came from the side-lines: OL wingers (Van de Sanden, Majri, Bronze) sprinting past Barça's Full-Backs and crossing to the center of the box, the main culprits for Barça being the Full-Backs themselves, the Center-Backs waiting in the box (and supposedly marking OL's FWs) and sometimes the GK. Sure, a pair of the goal-actions transitioned through the center of the pitch for some short moments, but I wouldn't say that it was the area where the main problems were arising for Barcelona. The first goal, for instance, is an handbook case: a long drive by 'Mbock Bathy, kicking from OL's half of the pitch, finds Van de Sanden sprinting like a greyhound on the Right-Side; she anticipates Barça's DF (I guess it was Left-Back Ouahabi) and perfectly crosses a curled ball in the box that neither the Center-Back (most probably Pereira) neither the GK Panos manage to even remotely intercept, thus Maroszan can connect and score almost undisturbed. The way the action unrolled, Hamroui's presence at the center of the pitch wouldn't have probably made the slightest difference (unless she could have somehow prevented Maroszan to enter the box, but I don't think it would have been her main duty and anyway, even in that case, Barça's CBs would have had some other OL's player to keep in check, most probably Hegerberg).