We look ahead to Saturday’s UEFA Women’s Champions League final at Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon with our Arsenal vs Barcelona prediction and preview. Will Barcelona win for a third straight year?
Arsenal vs Barcelona Stats: The Key Insights
Reigning champions Barcelona are favourites to win the match inside 90 minutes according to the Opta supercomputer, with a win probability of 56.5%. Arsenal have reached just their second UEFA Women’s Champions League final, after the 2006-07 season. That gap of 18 years is comfortably the biggest between two appearances in the showpiece of the competition by any team. Barcelona have won each of their last nine Champions League games and could become the first team ever to win 10 in a row in the competition within the same campaign.It promises to be a fascinating contest in Lisbon on Saturday when Barcelona take on Arsenal in the 2024-25 Women’s Champions League final.
Barcelona are looking to cement their legacy and prove why they are one of the best European sides of all time. This will be the Blaugrana’s sixth appearance in the UWCL final, and fifth in a row, with only Lyon (11) appearing in more.
Barça beat Wolfsburg and Lyon in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and could become just the second team to win the competition three seasons in a row after Lyon, who won five straight between 2016 and 2020.
This will also be their 100th game in European competition, and coincidentally they face Arsenal, who were their first opponents in 2012-13 when they met in the round of 32.
Although there was a change in the dugout at the beginning of the season, it has not changed Barça’s dominance either domestically or in Europe.
Pere Romeu – who replaced Jonatan Giráldez in July 2024 – could become the 11th manager to win the Champions League in their debut campaign, and the first since Sonia Bompastor with Lyon in 2021-22.
Three of the last four UWCL’s have been won by Spanish coaches and for Barcelona: Lluís Cortés in 2021 and Giráldez in 2023 and 2024.
Romeu will also be aiming to secure his 10th win in his 11th Women’s Champions League game as a manager (L1) – only Jean-Luc Vasseur (won first 10) has reached that mark in fewer matches.
Barcelona’s Alexia Putellas has scored in three of her five UWCL final appearances (2021, 2022 and 2024). Only Ada Hegerberg (2016, 2018, 2019, 2022) and Alexandra Popp (2014, 2016, 2020, 2023) have ever scored a final goal in four different editions of the competition, a record Putellas will be looking to equal.
But history is not just beckoning for Barcelona if they lift the trophy. Arsenal’s Renée Slegers is aiming to become the first Dutch manager to win the Women’s Champions League, and third overall across the men’s and women’s competitions, after Louis van Gaal (1995 with Ajax) and Frank Rijkaard (2006 with Barcelona).
The Comeback Queens
Arsenal have shown next-level resilience this year after battling back from the brink more than once to progress through the rounds in the UWCL. It was an early loss in the group stages to Bayern Munich that triggered a change of manager and form.
With such a turnaround under Slegers – who replaced Jonas Eidevall in October – the Gunners are the first team ever to reach the final of the Women’s Champions League despite losing the first leg of both their quarter-final (vs Real Madrid) and semi-final (vs Lyon) ties.
Slegers’ side really have been the comeback queens, and Arsenal became only the fourth team to lose the first leg of a UWCL semi-final tie at home but still reach the final after Turbine Potsdam and Eintracht Frankfurt in 2005-06, and Barcelona in 2023-24.
However, they will not want to go behind in this one. Since 2018, the team that scored first in the final have won it five of seven times.
Key to Arsenal’s resilience has been the form of Alessia Russo and Mariona Caldentey, who will be integral in their attempts to thwart Barcelona in Lisbon on Saturday.
The Arsenal duo have scored seven goals each in the UWCL this season, with only Vivianne Miedema in 2019-20 (10) and Kim Little in 2009-10 (9), both for the Gunners, ever scoring more times in a single campaign in the competition for an English club.
Arsenal brought Caldentey to London last summer from Barcelona, hoping she could bring the club European success, and she may deliver in her first season.
She is the only current Arsenal player to have ever featured in a UWCL final, playing in five for Barcelona between 2019 and 2024. The Barça squad, meanwhile, have made 48 collective appearances in finals.
This will no doubt be a daunting task for Arsenal, but they will be confident in their ability to show up in the big games this season. They may get some confidence from the fact that Barça have not been infallible this season, losing to an inconsistent Manchester City in the group stages and rivals Real Madrid in Liga F.
Barcelona Are the Team to Beat
Barcelona’s star-studded squad have shown again and again why they are the team to beat this season.
They rank first in all key attacking areas in the competition in 2024-25, averaging the most goals (4.4), shots (23.1), shots on target (9.9) and xG per game (2.9), as well as having the best conversion rate (19.1%).
Barcelona are the highest scorers in this season’s Women’s Champions League, netting 44 goals; only Wolfsburg (2013-14) have ever scored more in a single UWCL campaign (45).
Arsenal have scored 25 goals, the third-best tally in the competition from an xG of 22.2. They will need to make sure they take their chances because, as they showed against Chelsea, Barça are ruthless.
One concern for the Gunners will be how often Barcelona get forward to threaten the opposition goal. Barça average nearly 10 shots per game (23.1) more than Arsenal (13.4) in the competition this season, and have had 200 more touches in the opposition box (509 vs 309).
As well as being lethal in attack, Barcelona have the joint-best defensive record in the competition, conceding just seven goals (level with Lyon). They have also faced the fewest shots (73), allowing just 6.3 expected goals against (xGA).
Arsenal will hope they can count on their goalkeeper, Daphne van Domselaar, who missed the last three Women’s Super League games of the season and has not featured since the semi-final win over Lyon.
Among goalkeepers to have played 5+ games in the Champions League this season, only Van Domselaar (81.8%) has a better save rate than Barcelona’s Cata Coll (74.1%), though the Gunners haven’t started the same keeper in back-to-back games since MD 2 and MD 4 of the group stage.
Arsenal vs Barcelona Head-to-Head
This will be the fifth meeting between Arsenal and Barcelona in the UWCL, with the Gunners winning both legs of a round-of-32 tie in 2012-13 (3-0 away, 4-0 home), before Barça won both group-stage matches in the 2021-22 campaign (4-1 home, 4-0 away).
Arsenal have a good record against Spanish opposition in the competition, progressing from all four of their knockout-stage ties against such teams.
They already came from behind to eliminate Real Madrid in the quarter-finals. Only Lyon can boast a better 100% progression rate against teams from a particular nation in the competition (five vs Italian clubs).
Arsenal vs Barcelona Prediction
There is no doubt that Arsenal face an uphill battle to claim their second European title in 18 years. The Catalan champions have humbled some of the best teams in Europe in the last five seasons.
History may be repeated here as they continue to rival Lyon’s record to be the best team in European history, as the Opta supercomputer gives Barcelona a win probability inside 90 minutes of 56.5%.
Arsenal are given just a 21.7% chance of a victory in normal time, with a narrowly better chance of a draw, at 21.8%, which would mean extra-time and potentially penalties.
But in a one-off game, anything can happen, and Arsenal should not be written off. Teams that have already done that this season have fallen victim to the resilience of the north London club.
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, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.
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Arsenal vs Barcelona: Opta Supercomputer Women’s Champions League Final Prediction Opta Analyst.
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