An Italian record of 35.000 supporters is annouced. Roma will play at the Olimpico, that will host a women's football match for the first time ever. The result actually doesn't matter: if it has to be a loss, I at least hope it's an honorable one.
🟨📋🟥Here’s how we line up for our #UWCL quarter-final tie against @FCBfemeni 👊#ASRomaWomen #RomaBarca pic.twitter.com/BWPNur6Wpu— AS Roma Women 🇮🇹 (@ASRomaWomen) March 21, 2023 1️⃣1️⃣ inicial a Roma 🤍 pic.twitter.com/qT1NcEdyCF— FC Barcelona Femení (@FCBfemeni) March 21, 2023
I would have expected former Barça's player Vicky Losada to start for Roma: she doesn't instead. Roma anyway deployed what's arguably their best line-up: Captain Bartoli apparently recovered in time from an ankle sprain she suffered vs Fiorentina on Friday. Nothing to say about Barcelona's 11: basically every name is a world-beater. Oh, well.
🟨3️⃣9️⃣,4️⃣5️⃣4️⃣🟥The highest attended match in the history of Italian women’s football! 🐺 Thank you for your support! ❤️#ASRomaWomen #UWCL #RomaBarca pic.twitter.com/HqZMFD44Oh— AS Roma Women 🇮🇹 (@ASRomaWomen) March 21, 2023
It's a shame: Roma's GK Camelia Ceasar has been unreal, in particular vs Oshoala (who remains, in my opinion, quite overrated: she's excellent in Spanish league; not so much in WCL), but Roma had 3-4 good chances in 2nd Half, with Paños saving a very good middle-range shot by Manuela Giugliano and Valentina Giacinti missing too many good chances, especially the one in additional time from a magical FK-assist once again by Manuela Giugliano. Emilie Haavi has been very dangerous on the left-side in the second part of 2nd Half and actually a 1-1 final score wouldn't have been a scandal. It ends 0-1 for Barça instead and it's quite unlikely that Roma can manage to reverse the score in a packed-up Nou Camp next week. They're anyway somehow still in the run, and that's more than one could have hoped in this nigh-impossible clash.
Barca plays el classico against Real Madrid this Saturday... while Roma is resting on the weekend. It's only 1-0 lead... so I wouldn't fall on the sword just yet...
Roma indeed realised a good second half and could have score 1 or 2 goals. It was nice to see this team waking up, and try to catch the ball by a good pressing, keep it, and build some attack. Unfortunately, shooting on the GK rarely works, they missed the last move to draw. Anyway, the final score 0-1 is not so bad for Roma, considering its first appareance in WCL and playing a quarter-final against one of the best team in Europe/ It seems Barca suffers the same problems than last year : the liga imho is so weak that Barca players don't know very well defend when they are under attack. This team is not very impressive
💪 Notre 𝗫𝗜 𝗱𝗲 𝗱𝗲́𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 face à Chelsea ! #OLCHE | #UWCL 🔴🔵 pic.twitter.com/AXZFyTXBra— OL Féminin (@OLfeminin) March 22, 2023 Your Chelsea team tonight. 💪#UWCL pic.twitter.com/4WOGHC7XSt— Chelsea FC Women (@ChelseaFCW) March 22, 2023
Surprisingly Oberdorf can play... So starten die Wölfinnen ins @UWCL-Viertelfinal-Hinspiel! 🙏📺➡ @DAZNFootball und YouTube (https://t.co/FANGqin7l8)Matchcenter und Liveticker ➡ https://t.co/hyKER9cYId#PSGWOB #UWCL #VfLWolfsburg pic.twitter.com/MAYXGsMXY8— VfL Wolfsburg Frauen (@VfL_Frauen) March 22, 2023 📋 La compo' est tombée, voici le XI de départ pour ce #PSGWOB !Suivez la rencontre en direct sur la chaîne YouTube de @DAZNFootball ! 📺 https://t.co/VQUOj06XxM#UWCL pic.twitter.com/Zj05C9dZtR— PSG Féminines (@PSG_Feminines) March 22, 2023
OL-Chelsea just finished with a final 0-1 score. All these quarter-finals look like very close games! I only watched most of the 2nd Half, because I was having dinner while 1st Half was being played, so I missed the lonely goal. According to what I saw, Chelsea ran some risks in 2nd Half, but they contained OL reasonably well. I've got the feeling tha Lyon lost a lot of their steam when they subbed-out Cascarino (who had been one of their most dangerous players). Anyway, as I said before, the game seemed quite balanced. Now I wonder if PSG-Wolfsburg will be the 4th win by a 1 goal margin of this lot or if it will beg to be different.
Screw VAR. Someone tell me how on earth Hegering on Karchaoui was overturned. She stuck out her leg, missed the ball, and her backward movement of her leg wasn't because she pulled it back. It happened because of contact with Karchaoui that she created. On top of all that, if a PK had been given, I don't think the Wolfsburg PK would have happened.
Hegering touched the ball first (very slightly). Contact only came after that. Without that slight touch I believe ref would've stayed with her initial PK call.
Where is Huth's yellow? Her foul on Karchaoui was worse than what Groenen did to her, and she pushed Groenen on that play in retaliation.
She didn't change the direction of the ball at all in my opinion, and Karchaoui would have gotten to the ball if she hadn't been taken out.
I guess this is VAR-bizantinism anyway. Hegering's touch was as random as it gets: she had basically missed the ball and only got a lil piece of it by mistake with the sole of her shoe. It was kinda "morally" a PK: I know no such thing exists, but I guess you all understand what I mean. She was so aware of that, that she barely prostested at all and everyone was going to accept that call if the VAR hadn't chimed in. This is one of those cases (as well as the famous off-sides by 0.001 mm) where I don't think the VAR adds anything worthy to the game: ok, it technically gets a decision right, but it's a decision that no-one would have questioned before VAR's existence and, personally, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I can't stand the English commentator. Why is there such a difference in his opinion of Wolfsburg and PSG's performances? What did Wolfsburg actually do in the final third? Did they test Bouhaddi? The only things they did came off a poor Bouhaddi pass and a tame header winning a handball. And the corner that led to that header wouldn't have happened in my opinion if VAR hadn't overturned PSG's completely legitimate PK. Wolfsburg looked poor/average vs PSG when PSG went down to 10 players; I know "deserved" and "better" are controversial words when it comes to sports, but PSG down to 10 were very much still better than Wolfsburg by a fair margin in my opinion. Apart from De Almeida's silly yellow in the 1st half and that Bouhaddi pass, I really only have good/great things to say about the performances from PSG players. Geyoro was good/great at CB, and Groenen was good/great at LW before being good/great in midfield. Hamraoui's finding some form again, and Lawrence and Karchaoui had solid performances.
In the end it was ref's call not VAR's. She could've ignored this in the name - as you called it - "moral PK", but she didn't. My guess is... If she did then the door would open for the next ref to ignore 0.1 mm, and the next one 1 mm, and the next to disregard contact entirely... all in the name of some personal preference.