We look ahead to the second leg of this UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final at Stamford Bridge with our Chelsea vs Barcelona prediction and preview.
Chelsea vs Barcelona Stats: The Key Insights
The Opta supercomputer gives Chelsea a 39.7% chance of bouncing back from their first leg defeat and winning at Stamford Bridge, though will need to win by three clear goals just to force extra-time. Chelsea are the 153rd team to lose the first leg of a UEFA Women’s Champions League knockout stage tie by 3+ goals, with none of the previous 152 sides able to overturn such a deficit in the competition. Barcelona look set to become only the second team to reach the final of the Women’s Champions League in five straight seasons, after Lyon (2015-16 to 2019-20).A damaging 4-1 defeat in the first leg of this semi-final tie at Estadi Johan Cruyff last Sunday left Chelsea on the brink of a third successive elimination from the Women’s Champions League at the hands of Barcelona, each time at the last-four stage.
Despite having to wait until the 44th minute for their first shot of the match and going 2-0 behind in the 70th minute, the Blues looked like they might wrestle the momentum back in this tie when Sandy Baltimore halved the deficit with 16 minutes remaining.
That had come against the run of play, though, and two Barcelona goals in the final 10 minutes made an already difficult task for Chelsea now seem almost impossible.
Before Chelsea, 152 teams have lost the first leg of a UEFA Women’s Champions League knockout stage tie by 3+ goals, with 100% of them going on to exit the competition in the second leg, so the Blues would need to achieve a first to save their skin.
Twelve of those teams have suffered that heavy first leg defeat to Barcelona, including Wolfsburg in this season’s quarter-final, losing the second leg 6-1 after a 4-1 defeat in the first.
Barça have gone on to compound the misery on their opponents in 10 of those ties by also winning the second leg, but have failed to do so in two of the last three instances, losing 2-1 away to Manchester City in the 2020-21 quarter-finals (won 3-0 in 1st leg) and 2-0 away to Wolfsburg in the 2021-22 semi-finals (won 5-1 in 1st leg). A small something for Chelsea to cling on to perhaps.
The Blues, meanwhile, have progressed from two of their last three Women’s Champions League knockout-stage ties when losing the first leg, doing so as recently as last month against Man City. Chelsea lost 2-0 away from home in the quarter-finals before bouncing back with a 3-0 home win, something that would of course take this tie to extra-time.
That seems incredibly unlikely, though, unless Chelsea can become the first side to shut Barcelona – who had 19 shots and nine on target in the first leg – out in a Women’s Champions League game since City on MD 1 of this season’s group stage.
Since then, Barcelona have won eight consecutive matches by an aggregate score of 40-4, becoming the first team in UWCL history to score 3+ goals in eight consecutive matches.
In fact, only Wolfsburg in 2013-14 (45), Turbine Potsdam in 2010-11 (43) and Eintracht Frankfurt in 2014-15 (42) have scored more goals in a single edition of the competition than Barça’s tally of 40 this term.
Stamford Bridge has been a happy hunting ground for Chelsea, though. They have won all six of their games there this season in all competitions, scoring 18 goals and conceding just three. The last away team to win there, though, was Barcelona in last season’s semi-final second leg (2-0).
With two goals and an assist from the bench in the first leg, Clàudia Pina has shone once again in this season’s Women’s Champions League. The Spaniard now has at least three more goals than any other player in the competition this season (nine) and is one goal away from being the first Barcelona player to score 10+ goals in a campaign since Alexia Putellas in 2021-22.
Putellas herself assisted twice in Barcelona’s 4-1 victory last weekend and created the most chances of any player in that first leg (five). She did, though, also miss a first-half penalty.
Ewa Pajor opened the scoring in the first leg and she has now scored in three of her last six semi-final starts in the Women’s Champions League, with each goal coming against an English side: for Wolfsburg in April 2018 vs Chelsea and April 2023 vs Arsenal, and for Barcelona vs Chelsea in the 1st leg.
For a short time in the first leg, Chelsea’s Hannah Hampton looked like she might be the hero of the match, becoming the first goalkeeper to save a penalty in the Women’s Champions League for an English side (excluding shootouts) since Manuela Zinsberger for Arsenal in October 2021, which was also a Putellas spot kick for Barcelona.
The Blues will be in search of a shining light in the second leg and might look toward Catarina Macário, who has been directly involved in four goals across her last four appearances in all competitions (two goals, two assists), assisting Baltimore’s goal in the first leg.
The American international also scored in Lyon’s 2022 UEFA Women’s Champions League final success against Barcelona.
Chelsea vs Barcelona Head-to-Head
Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor has previous with Barcelona, beating them 3-1 in the 2022 final with Lyon in Turin, but she can’t take much solace from Chelsea’s head-to-head record with them.
The Blues have won just one of their six Women’s Champions League meetings with Barcelona (D1 L4), only losing more times in the competition to Wolfsburg (6) than the Spanish side (4).
Barcelona, meanwhile, have won their two away games against Chelsea in the Women’s Champions League to nil, winning 1-0 in 2022-23 and 2-0 in 2023-24, with both victories coming at the semi-final stage.
Chelsea vs Barcelona Prediction
The Opta supercomputer makes Chelsea slight favourites to get revenge on Barcelona in the second leg of this UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final tie, with the Blues picking up victory inside 90 minutes in 39.7% of simulations compared to 33.7% for Barca.
The supercomputer correctly expected Barcelona to win the first leg having given them 49.5% chance of bringing a lead to Stamford Bridge for the second leg.
Chelsea will require more than just a marginal advantage to overturn this tie, however.
Opta Power Rankings
The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system. They assign an ability score to over 2,000 domestic women’s football teams. This score is on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.
Ahead of kick-off this weekend, Barcelona remain top, but Chelsea have slipped below Lyon after their defeat last week, while the French side secured a first-leg win over Arsenal in the other semi-final to go second according to the Opta Power Rankings.
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Chelsea vs Barcelona: Women’s Champions League Semi-Final Preview Opta Analyst.
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