Barca paves way for ascension of Spanish women’s soccer

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This article was published 24/05/2024 (532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It will be a spectacular send-off.

As Barcelona’s blaugrana colours and the blue, red and white of Olympique Lyonnais shimmer on the nearby waters of the Nervión, projected by the illuminated panels of Estadio de San Mamés, women’s football’s team of the moment will be facing the team of the century in a much-anticipated Champions League final.

The symbolic conclusion to the club season, the match (Saturday, 11 a.m., DAZN) will also serve as a sort of going-away party ahead of the upcoming Olympic Games, where the women’s football tournament will commence in exactly two months.

Spain, the reigning world champions, will bring as many as eight or nine Barcelona players to the Games. France, which hosts them, will name six or seven participants from Lyon to a team it hopes will use home field advantage to win the gold medal.

Saturday’s showdown will also feature the last three winners of the Ballon d’Or Féminin, as well as a trio of the 2023 award’s top four finalists. That they all represent Barcelona has a lot to do with the club’s recent dominance, both in the domestic Liga F and continental competition.

They’ve won five straight Spanish titles, and this will be their fourth successive Champions League final. Last year they beat Wolfsburg to regain the trophy they first won in 2021 against Chelsea. In between, they lost the 2022 final to, not at all incidentally, Olympique Lyonnais.

It was Lyon’s record-extending eighth European championship, and sixth in eight years. If there had been even the hint of a notion that the team had finally entered a period of decline — which would have no doubt pleased national rivals and perennial runners-up Paris Saint-Germain — it was put to bed then and there.

Yet, the sport looks a lot different than it did when Lyon won their first Champions League back in 2011.

That final, versus Turbine Potsdam, was played at London’s Craven Cottage in front of just over 14,000 spectators. Thirteen years on, more than 50,000 fans will fill Bilbao’s San Mamés, and a global audience in the tens of millions will watch on television or a streaming service.

As a club, the history of Lyon Féminin is inseparable from that of women’s football’s steady growth.

Barcelona, on the other hand, are emblematic of its more recent meteoric rise.

Prior to last summer’s World Cup triumph in Sydney, Spain had only once emerged from the competition’s group stage, and the 2024 Olympics will be their first. They’re heavily favoured to win it.

Among a number of factors that have contributed to the country’s quite sudden ascendancy has been investment in women’s football at Barcelona. As it turns out — and it’s the same old story — player development and corresponding popularity can skyrocket with even modest resources.

When Barça eventually went above and beyond modest, they changed the game completely.

Atlético Madrid, winners of three straight Spanish titles, suddenly found themselves a distant second, and over their current run of success Barcelona haven’t won the league by fewer than nine points. The gulf could well be 20 this season.

Supporters, meanwhile, will inevitably rattle off a list of their players if asked to name the sport’s top footballers. There’s Bonmatí, of course, but also Paralluelo, Graham Hansen, Pina and, naturally, Putellas.

The thing is, Barcelona’s superstars are what they are in no small part because of the groundwork laid by Lyon players – by the likes of Camille Abily, Saki Kumagai, Amandine Henry, Eugénie Le Sommer, Ada Hegerberg and Wendie Renard. Those latter three, as it happens, still play for Lyon, and the 33-year-old Renard is also captain of France.

Even more than the spectacle of a Champions League final, today’s encounter will be a showcase of the very best of women’s football, past and present.

It will also send the players to the Olympic Games in mezmerizing fashion.

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