Barça, Benfica, Blancas, a Ballon, and Defining Dominance
Barça Femení continues to swat away all would-be competition. This week we get an idea of just how far ahead of the pack they still are.
It can be tough to contextualize dominance in sports. I’m not talking about PSG in Ligue 1 or Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga. I’m talking about obscene, vertigo-inducing dominance that leaves only incoherent babbling in its wake.
What do we make of Josef Bican, who’s credited with 810 goals in 527 club and international matches between 1931 and 1957? What to say to people - actual, grownup people, with jobs, families, and responsibilities - who harbor nagging questions about Lionel Messi because he didn’t feel like roasting Phil Bardsley in shitty weather once a year?
That this sense pervades analysis of women’s football is understandable. Nowhere in major sports these days is the chasm between even above average teams and the most accomplished greater. While the game gets more competitive with each season, the apex predators look pretty secure atop the food chain.
In the seventeen seasons since first league title in 2006-07, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin has won sixteen domestic league titles, ten domestic cups, eight Champions League titles (including five straight between 2016 and 2020), and five trebles. They’ve lost a total of seven league games in that span, and only four since 2010. During that stretch, domestically, they’ve scored 1,744 goals and conceded 118. The most goals they’ve conceded during that run was in 2013-14, when they “bled” a dozen. They’ve not conceded double-digit goals in a league campaign since.
This sentiment also swirls around Barça Femení. It’s not terribly surprising, given that, since their first-ever league title in 2011-12, Barça Femení have played 366 league matches, of which they’ve won 313 and lost only 18, scoring 1,331 goals and conceded 147. Since their treble-winning season of 2020-21 it’s somehow even crazier - 117 played, 112 wins, two defeats, 544 scored, 42 conceded. That’s an average score of 4.67 to 0.36.
Hearing would-be detractors winge and moan about “dominating a farmers’ league” is not unlike hearing someone question just how much of Wilt Chamberlain averaging over 50 points and 26 rebounds per game in the NBA of 1961-62 the NBA’s was owed to his own timeless greatness and how much was owed to regularly lining up against a cavalcade of pasty plumbers.
All-time greats remain all-time greats for a couple of reasons. First, they don’t simply dominate mundane competition, they ravage it. Only then does the question of how they respond on the biggest of stages against top-tier competition even really matter.
A quick aside: while I agree that coming big, in big moments, against the toughest competition is the biggest part of this equation, I also think we devalue the focus, discipline, and execution required to completely obliterate all comers. day in, day out, week in, week out season in, season out.
As I’ve dug into before, there are only so many opportunities each season to genuinely assess Barça Femení’s performance under actual duress. The coming week potentially offers an early opportunity for a version of this assessment. Tonight in Sant Joan Despí, Barça kick off their Champion League campaign against Portuguese champs Benifca.
Now, I must admit that, in the near-identical scenario last season - Champions League opener at the Johan, against Benfica - Barça tallied nine goals and cruised to a 6-2 win in the reserved fixture in Lisbon. Yes, recent history suggests that this won’t be much of a battle.
That being said, this is a new iteration of the most prestigious club competition in the world. Whatever happened last season is irrelevant. When the ball gets rolling tonight at 9:00 local time, it will happen with these teams on identical footing. If Barça want to kick off this European campaign at a full sprint, they’ve got to go out and do it again.
It is also worth noting that, since the conclusion of last season's group stage (also the end of calendar 2022), Benfica have been imperious, romping through their domestic competition, winning all but two matches (one in the Taça de Portugal, one by a 1-0 score to second-placed Sporting) and regularly dominated and putting up some massive scorelines of their own. Also, in four qualifiers for this year's Champions League, they’ve tallied four wins by a combined 23-1 score.
So, sure, Barça are rightly prohibitive favorites here. But there will be a hungry, ascendant team (which has only existed since 2018!) in attendance, looking to ensure that the Blaugrana are competing against more than just themselves.
Then, on Sunday afternoon at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys on Montjuic, Barça will host “eternal rivals” Real Madrid, in top-of-the-table Clásica that will be a battle for reasons beyond simply narrative and “well maybe…”
For a while now, Las Blancas have regularly made life less than comfortable for Barça. In the spring of 2022, they flirted with raining on a magical parade. And last season they twice gave Barça all they wanted. First, in the semifinals of the Supercopa de España Femenina, they held Barça to a 1-1 draw through 90 minutes before being undone by extra-time goals by Salma Paralluelo and Mariona. Then, in late March, they traveled to the Johan and put on a spectacular defensive performance, holding Barça scoreless for nearly 80 minutes and only falling to a Fridolina Rolfö penalty in the 77th. Now they’re coming in with 21 points from their first eight matches (Barça have the full 24).
Though they’ve still got a ways to go, Real Madrid have real designs on legitimately threatening Barça’s domestic inevitability. Notching a win on enemy ground with first place on the line would certainly help.
Of course, awaiting them will be a side that’s spent the past three weeks turning decided non-minnows Switzerland into San Marino (17-2 across three World Cup and Nations League meetings since August!) - Barça may not always want to be Spain but Spain needs Barça - descending on Paris to make up top eight and three-fourths of the top four, and keep the Ballon d'Or Catalan, and casually (thanks to the no-longer "future" best striker in the world) put a businesslike 14-0 on Sevilla and Villarreal.
A statement’s about to be made.