UEFA Women's Champions League 2020/21

Quite expected: Kazakstan obtained two Champions' League's spots only on the back of BIIK Kazygurt's decently successful campaigns from the latest seasons, but it was well-known there there really were no other clubs in their league that were at a similar level or that could anyway consistently battle against European competition.

Edit: also, there is a wrong link in your post, @shlj: the first three matches all point to the same report from the first one of them.

 

Wow, I now notice Glasgow City barely advances at penalty shootout vs an Irish team!

Weren't they one of the quarter-finalists of 2020 Edition of Women's Champions' League? Why had they to play the preliminary round? Wasn't the result of last season enough for their rankings?

 

Lol, I bet no-one in the first pot wants to pick Vålerenga as their unseeded opponent!

 

Valur wouldn't be a good draw either for any of the seeded teams. They have a bunch of Icelandic national team players. It's difficult to compare teams from these pots, but there are a few Eastern European teams in that seeded pot likely get problems against most unseeded teams.

 

Ugh, this is a tough grouping for my home team Valur. A lot of internationals on both teams (St. Pölten and Glasgow City) and I am not sure which one I would prefer to meet. Two players in each team have applied their trade in Iceland, Mateja Zver from Slovenia who once played for Þór/KA and Lauren Wade who played for Þróttur last year. Both very good players.

The goals from the match between Valur - HJK in the first round.

 

How does it work exactly? And why was this method implemented instead of leaving it at just seeded/unseeded?

 

If I have this correct, the idea was to reduce the travel distance for the clubs.

 

It's what I had supposed, but some choices seem anyway odd, by a geographical point of view (although probably it couldn't be helped, at least considering some "peripheral" countries, such as Island, or Cyprus or Russia).

Wow, some matches are really a shame, because they pit together teams that could have easily both advanced otherwise: see Valur vs Glasgow City.

But I also regret that Gintra Universitates was matched against Vålerenga: the Lithuanian club has an impressive record in Champions' League for a "small country" team (a few seasons ago they were eliminated by Barcelona at the round of 16 stage), but, despite that, I don't think they hold many chances to advance over the current leaders of Norwegian league.

Anderlecht vs Benfica sounds so much "Men's European Cup from some decades ago"!

 

Yeah, it reeks of nostalgia.

I look at Anderlecht as a dark horse team. I'm glad Vålerenga didn't draw them. Tessa Wullaert has returned home after a few years abroad and Belgium now have a flagship team on the rise. I remember LSK were surprisingly knocked out by them last year just when they had lost Engen to Wolfsburg and Reiten to Chelsea. That was the beginning of the end of LSK's stronghold in the Norwegian game.

 

I second that.

 

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As usual, Tim Grainey did the work and put out an astounding article on the 40 clubs in the European qualifying rounds, looking at each side through their import players. This week, 10 teams will progress to the last 32.

The Week in Women's Football: Champions League qualifying round-up; Davidson leads UWS moves abroad - https://www.tribalfootball.com/arti...-moves-abroad-uws-league-2-adds-teams-4347931 (Archive)

They're back tomorrow, Wednesday, for Round 2:

(GMT times)​

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It could be a good one in the evening (19:30 CET), if SL Benfica can build on their away display in Greece. But they had trouble at the weekend with their biggest league rivals, a rare loss, and Benfica's worst one since entering the Portuguese top division in 2019/20.

SL Benfica 0 - 3 Sporting CP
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGmLxhVRxWs


Last season, Benfica failed to win only one game (a 3-2 loss to Sporting) and led the table on goal difference, but no team won the title.

Anderlecht made light work of the Northern Irish champions in the 1st round qualifier. The Belgian club are still insisting on the "Must Use An Orange Ball" thing, but I dunno, Uefa need to force them to add fake snow on the field or something.

RSC Anderlecht 8 - 0 Linfield
De Neve 10', 40', Wijnants, 11', 17', De Caigny 31', 66', Wullaert 43', 72'-
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka1OGxPHXBs


For the Wednesday night match, Anderlecht posted a live streaming link. Currently the Polsy checker says the only geoblock is Portugal.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6KB0Kc7Qk8

 

That's a lot of US GKs abroad! I knew the US had a reputation for producing good GKs but, dang, it felt like nearly a quarter of those teams had a US GK.

 

Here is my biased perspective. I am very much excited for the game tomorrow and to see how well my team, Valur, will do against the Scottish champions. Sadly for Valur, they have just sold their best defender, Guðný Árnadóttir, to AC Milan and will have to do without her. Also, two key players, Fanndís Friðriksdóttir (109 caps and 17 goals) and Ásgerður Baldursdóttir (10 caps) are out due to pregnancy. Another fact which is against Valur is that the club has not played a single match for nearly two weeks now whereas Glasgow city has played four games in the same amount of time. Nonetheless It will be interesting to see how well Elín Metta Jensen, who I now readily admit is my favorite Icelandic player, and the young Hlín Eiríksdóttir will fare against the Scottish defense. On the other hand, hopefully for me, Hayley Lauder will be quiet this time around. I expect a though match between two evenly matched teams, but then again, I could be wrong.

 

Valur - Glasgow City 1 - 1
Glasgow wins on penalties 3-4

I know I am very much biased but this felt like a robbery to me. Glasgow City was the better team in the first half and scored on the 50th minute but after that it was all Valur's game. I mentioned earlier on this thread that Elín Metta Jensen is my favorite Icelandic player and I tend to rave about her but her performance during this game proved why as she created all kind of problems for the Glasgow City defense (some of the defenders are not going to sleep well tonight). She should though have done better when she was put through on goal but her first touch failed her and the keeper was able to get her hands on the ball. Then only three minutes before the end of overtime, Valur should have had a penalty when Hlín Eiríksdóttir was clearly fouled inside the box, but the ref who was well positioned seemed to have swallowed her whistle. At that moment I nearly threw my computer out the window. For me the ref had a poor game and blew her whistle repeatedly whenever a Glasgow player fell to the ground but did not give similar fouls to Valur which frustrated me a lot. Again, this is from a perspective of a Valur supporter, but truly is how it felt to me. The less said about the penalty shootout the better so I am going to leave it at that.

 

and deleted it

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=445936940140720

 

It's sad that Valur has to pack up already.

Apart from how actually the game turned out, I had said early that this particular pairing was going to eliminate a team that would have probably deserved advancing.

 

GKS Górnik Łęczna 2 - 1 Apollon Ladies F.C.
Kamczyk 81', Zdunek 83' - Freda 3'(p)

 

Glasgow City through after penalty shoot-out for the second time in a row.

Anderlecht beaten at home by Benfica was a surprise to me.

 

Well, in the end they have Bento and Eusebio, they were supposed to win...

 

GKS over Apollon surprises me

 

Clubs like Apollon, BIIK Kazygurt, ZNK Spartak Subotica, Gintra, Sarajevo, etc., have one thing in common - they are often unrivaled winners of their otherwise weak leagues which in turn allows them to pick up ranking points almost each year. On top of that some of those clubs have luck during draws and often advance over weak opponents to round of 16 - collecting even more ranking points.

Apollon's ranking 16.280
GKS ranking 8.285

GKS Górnik Łęczna is currently 5th in what's nowadays a very competitive Polish Ekstraliga while Apollon is leading unopposed in Cyprus with 6 wins out of 6 matches and 28-1 GD.

yet...

while Apollon has shown some quality in 1st half, they ultimately went out of steam quickly in 2nd - when most of it's players couldn't keep up with game still beeing played at high intensity and tempo. That's effect from lack of league competition.

Looking at clubs from Poland in UWCL round of 32 (last years)

2014/15 - Medyk Konin 2-3 Glasgow City F.C
2015/16 - Medyk Konin 0-9 Lyon
2016/17 - Medyk Konin 6-6 Brescia
2017/18 - Medyk Konin 0-14 Lyon
2018/19 - Medy Konin - DNQ from group with Glasgow, Anderlecht and Martve equal on 6 points with first two and with best GD... but H-2-H was decider
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2019/20 - GKS Górnik Łęczna DNQ from group with Twente, Besiktas and Alashkert
2020/21 - GKS Górnik Łeczna vs. ?
2021/22 - Czarni Sosnowiec (undecided yet)

One could say that Medyk was twice out of luck with the draw but in other cases Polish clubs competed on equal foot with champs from Italy, Scotland, Netherlands or Belgium as opposed to ie. Czech teams who advanced sometimes as far as round of 16 but often on the back of Cypriot, Turkish, Belarusan or Lithuanian clubs.