Too close to call winner of UEFA Women’s Champions League

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This article was published 15/05/2021 (1938 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is no blueprint for this year’s UEFA Women’s Champions League decider.

Neither of Sunday’s finalists has previously won the tournament; one has never progressed this far before. But with the newness comes compelling storylines, and both have built plenty of those in the run-up to the showdown in Gothenburg.

Take Barcelona.

The Blaugranes Femeni have been a professional entity for only six years, but last weekend they won a second successive Spanish title — and with nine games to go, no less. The triumph made them the country’s record champions, and along the way in what has been a historic season in the Catalan capital they also eliminated very good Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain sides from the European Cup.

Now, in the Champions League Final, they’ll deploy an XI that began to take on its current shape in 2017, when Mapi Leon was signed from Atletico Madrid and, crucially, Lieke Martens joined from Rosengard.

Martens, quite simply, changed everything. The best players do that.

Already a European champion with The Netherlands when she arrived at Estadi Johan Cruyff, she took Barcelona to a first Champions League Final in 2019 (they lost to Lyon) and two months later contested a World Cup Final against the United States.

More recently, the 28-year-old winger, who plays on the left of a three-pronged attack alongside Jenni Hermoso and Caroline Graham Hansen, scored both goals in Barcelona’s 2-1 second-leg defeat of PSG in the semi-finals.

On Sunday, Martens will be looking to break down a Chelsea defense that conceded only 10 goals in the just-completed Women’s Super League — a campaign in which the Blues claimed the title on a third occasion out of four.

Three-time Champions League semi-finalists, Chelsea finally booked a place in the continent’s most prestigious match when their 4-1 win over Frauen-Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich overturned a 2-1 first-leg loss in Bavaria. The rejuvenated Fran Kirby scored the brace that bookended the victory, and both Ji So-yun and Pernille Harder also tallied at Kingsmeadow.

Harder, the reining UEFA Player of the Year, was part of the Wolfsburg side that lost last season’s final to Lyon. She’s also one of three recent acquisitions that has quickly turned Chelsea from an outfit that failed to qualify for Europe in 2019 to a squad that is currently dominating English football.

Melanie Leupolz and Sam Kerr are the others.

Leupolz, a 27-year-old midfielder who won the Olympic Gold Medal with Germany in 2016, is the metronome that keeps her side ticking. And Kerr, who started slowly in England, led the Super League with 21 goals in the term just finished. She has now won Golden Boots in England, Australia and the United States — the only player to accomplish the feat.

Now, no summary of this Chelsea team would be complete without at least a nod to Emma Hayes.

The Blues manager, quite simply, is one of the most captivating figures in English football.

Energetic and plainspoken, the 44-year-old bravely undertook a complete overhaul of her playing personnel a couple years ago, twice breaking the world transfer record to sign Harder and Kerr.

Then there are her imaginative motivational techniques. Ahead of the 2015 FA Cup Final she gave the entire team a rose and a poem. More recently, she has encouraged her players to take inspiration from geese, who fly in formation and constantly communicate.

Hayes’ unique leadership has already delivered the title and League Cup this season (Canadian international Jessie Fleming, who hasn’t figured in Champions League play, helped out on the League Cup front), and with the FA Cup and Champions League finals still to go she’s on the cusp of winning the quadruple.

Even more notably than that is the fact that she could become the first female manager in 12 years to win the Champions League.

Barcelona, however, are anticipating their own clean sweep of trophies. The European Cup would add to their Spanish title and victory in the Copa de la Reina.

Whatever the result, Sunday’s showpiece will complete a season in which both Barcelona and Chelsea have not only excelled but also built toward dominating. But only one of them will finish the story as they planned.

There’s no blueprint here — only a build-up narrative that’s about as good as it gets.

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