Purveyors of Positivity at Chaos FC: Barça Femení, the 2024 UWCL Final, and Unfinished Business
A fifth Champions League final in six years for Barça Femení will yield either a second treble or a third defeat to Lyon. Inflection points don't get much bigger than this.
It's never nothing with this club.
In the weeks since we last hooked up, May You Live In Interesting Times FC has celebrated Xavi’s U-turn on jumping before he could be pushed with:
A shambolic first half against a playing-out-the-stirng Valencia side that genuinely had me wondering how much we’d gotten paid to throw this game. I mean…
… followed by a face-saving second half hat trick from Robert Lewandowski…
… and a brutal second half in Girona, in which Barça this time turned a 2-1 halftime lead into a 4-2 defeat and handed pole position for second place in La Liga (and that sweet, sweet Saudi Supercopa cash) to their Catalan counterparts.
On the bright side, immediately afterward, Girona conceded a 99th-minute equalizer away to Alavés and turned a dominant home showing against Villarreal into a 1-0 defeat. As a result, a pair of perfectly acceptable 2-0 wins - at home against Real Sociedad and away to Almería - and a less-emphatic-than-the-score-suggests 3-0 win over Rayo Vallecano cemented the Blaugrana as league runners-up.
Meanwhile, in a mythical land where moral victories are not legal tender, Real Madrid continued Real Madriding like they’ve never Real Madrided before, en route to yet another Champions League final, thanks to a pair of LATE goals from a 34-year-old loanee from… Espanyol. Because of fucking course.
Against this backdrop, there could never be no twist in the awkward pseudo-feel-good story of Xavi’s course correction. We got it, baby.
What started the last week of April as a heartfelt celebration of pride, love for a club, shared glories, and a divorce that neither side was interested in affording…
… ended, precisely one month later, in Xavi’s dismissal from Barça’s managerial post, with former Hoffenheim, Bayern Munich, and Germany manager Hansi Flick coming in to replace him.
So, qué pasó?
In short, during his press conference ahead of the Almería game, Xavi took a moment to remind culés and Barça’s board of a fundamental fact:
“…the situation is very difficult. The situation is complicated. Especially on an economic level to compete with the top competitors, both Madrid in Spain and in Europe. We have an economic situation that has nothing to do with 25 years ago when a coach said: ‘I want this one, this one, and this one’ and they brought him in without problems. Now it is not like that: Our rivals are in much better conditions than us, on the issue of Financial Fair Play.”
That those in charge of the club and its most performative online cohort saw “betrayal” in a Barça icon and manager saying - accurately, mind you - “Real Madrid are better than us, on and off the pitch, right now and probably for a while to come” is unsurprising. It is not entirely reasonable. It is, however, to be expected.
That he continued, referencing conversations with president Joan Laporta and [sporting director] Deco, and that:
“...we are going to adjust to that. That does not mean that we do not want to compete or fight for the titles. That is the situation and the culé must understand… These are complicated times, but we will continue fighting.”
Again, totally reasonable. Again, not the point. The point, to paraphrase Sr. Laporta:
The Negreira case (seemingly) subsiding in the runup to a no-stakes finale against Sevilla offered Barça the opportunity to enjoy a calm, quiet end to this Barça season, buoyed by an off-pitch victory. That Barça declined the invitation is wholly unsurprising. That the manner in which it was done invites its own scrutiny is also not shocking.
It’s never nothing around here.
So what’s all this got to do with Barça Femení?
Gloriously little.
Staying Above the Fray
When we last spoke, Barça Femení were preparing to avenge a home defeat for the first time in roughly half a decade. An abomination though it may been, Chelsea’s ploy to purge all that makes this sport enjoyable had sent them home with a 1-0 advantage after the sides’ first semiifinal leg on Montjuïc.
Between the two legs, Barça had at least returned to the win column - though not without conceding two goals inside of 20 minutes before rallying to the 4-2 win against Sant Joan Despí’s own Levante Las Planas.
La Blaugrana took the pitch at Stamford Bridge three days later, needing to overturn a first-leg deficit for the time since an inexplicable 3-1 loss to Kazakh side BIIK Shymkent in September 2018 (they advanced after a 3-0 second-leg win).
Despite some Guardiola-esque too-cleverism from Jonatan Giráldez - a 3-5-2 setup, an insistence on keeping the world’s best left back, Ona Batlle, on the right, starting Lucy Bronze (a defender first, second, and third) in midfield, a staggering aversion to substitutions - and some rather aggressive flirtation with disaster by a disjointed defense, Barça rode some fortunate bounces and a pair of coulda-gone-either-way (though hardly outlandish) calls to a 2-0 win and a fifth Champions League final appearance in six years.
Whether cynically or inspiredly (your mileage may vary), effectively gumming up the Barça death machine’s works is a feat. This was the fourth straight meeting (including Barça’s 2-1 aggregate semifinal win last season) in which Chelsea has made life uncomfortable for Barça.
If Melanie Leupolz doesn’t put her 31st-minute shot, in front of a WIDE OPEN goal, off the crossbar…
… if Cata Coll can't get a hand to Catarina Macário’s spectacular half-volley around Patri Guijarro about four minutes late …
… if Sjoeke Nüsken’s cross off of Irene Paredes’s woefully underhit back-pass to Cata either finds Lauren James or the back of the net off of Johanna Kaneryd’s boot…
… if Nüsken’s sliding attempt in the 57th finds the other side of the post…
… things might be very different.
Some credit, of course, must go to Chelsea. They showed far greater ambition than in the first leg and were active and decisive in forcing and pouncing Barça’s miscues. Not to be discounted, however, is Giráldez opting to line up most of his players at least a little bit out of position and doing little to pivot when things got dicey.
I’m Certainly Not Saying I Know Better, BUT…
Despite all the preceding evidence to the contrary, I a) find dudes bitching online about coaching deeply unedifying and b) do not fancy myself a football tactician of any renown. I absolutely have questions about some of Jonatan Giráldez’s decisions against Chelsea. I am also not about to pretend that he’s aimlessly mashing buttons. The man had solid, considered reasons for setting his lineups as he did - that it didn’t fully make sense to me is my problem. That it didn’t yield a performance on par with this team’s standard is his occupational hazard.
What I’ve struggled (then and still) to grasp as reasonably is the minimalistic approach to substitutions. There’s a lot to be said for having patience and confidence in your players to fight through adversity. There is, however, also merit in looking for a boost against a team that’s dragged you out of your comfort zone.
On this front, if the gameplan (especially in the second leg) was to be solid and tough, how did quintessential adult-in-the-room Marta Torrejón not even get a cameo? Conversely, with the attack struggling to land anything resembling a knockout against Chelsea’s defense, it’s positively crazy that Clàudia Pina and Vicky López combined to see the pitch for just over half an hour.
And how in the actual hell does Alexia Putellas see roughly half an hour of action over two Champions League semifinal legs in which toughness, intelligence, versatility, and big-game experience are at a premium? The conclusion that she - any of these four, really - couldn’t offer a positive spark in the tie is confounding.
I get that this isn’t a tribute act but, at the time of these games, there was a non-zero chance that Alexia was playing out the end of her tenure with Barça. This, thankfully, isn’t what happened, as earlier this week Alexia signed a contract that runs through 2026. (I’ll have something dedicated to this in the coming days. For now? HELL YES!)
Had the Alexia Putellas era ended with its title superstar making a sub-cameo appearance in a Champions League semi, I can only imagine that Laporta - who’s had to watch Messi make for the exit and has now hired and fired a pair of club legends as manager - would have pulled every financial lever necessary to lure NWSL-bound Giráldez back, just to can his ass.
Familiar Feelings, Good and Otherwise
Suffice it to say Barça have since rediscovered their stride, winning their five matches since Stamford Bridge by a combined score of 31-1. Included are a pair of 8-0 victories, most notably La Blaugrana’s Copa de la Reina final thrashing of Real Sociedad:
Amid this vintage run of form, I keep revisiting those decidedly non-vintage showings against Chelsea.
Before last season’s Champions League final in Eindhoven, for all of its successes and superstars, this team didn’t have a signature comeback to its name. In fact, the only vivid memories of this team getting punched in the mouth culminated in Lyon celebrations.
In the 2019 Champions League final in Budapest, an upstart Barça squad (weird, I know) got pelted with four goals in the opening half-hour and only got on the scoreboard in the 89th (at 4-0) through Asisat Oshoala.
The sides met again in the 2022 final, this time in Turin. Barça came in as reining treble winners, having annihilated Chelsea in 2021 to earn FC Barcelona the distinction of becoming the first club to win both a men’s and a women’s treble. Utterly dominant throughout the campaign, La Blaugrana came into that final on the heels of a paradigm-shifting couple of months. From narrative and competitive perspectives, a passing of the torch felt imminent. Alas…
More or less as they had three years earlier, Lyon led 3-0 after 33 minutes. There was greater resistance this time, in the form of an Alexia goal and Patri’s virtuosic Hail Mary.
The result remained the same, with Lyon taking home an incredible eighth Champions League trophy after the 3-1 win.
There was no rational reason to doubt this team’s ability to conjure a comeback in a big spot, against accomplished and unafraid opposition. And yet…
For Barça, June 3, 2023, started as a replay of an all-too-familiar nightmare, this time with a new monster. At halftime, Barça trailed 2-0, having put just two of sixteen shots on target. Whatever flickers of doubt may or may not have flashed across my brain during that intermission thankfully never seeped into the Barça dressing room, as, in a two-minute span just after halftime, Patri hooked up with CGH and Aitana…
… to level the score and set up Fridolina Rolfö’s winner:
Chelsea demanded a new flavor of comeback. This called not just for focus, fortitude, and execution within a single match but overturning an inherited deficit. And, for good measure, doing so required 195 (roughly, including stoppage time) minutes of grittin’-n-grindin’ that’s seldom required of this team.
Having answered that bell, Barça are back at a familiar dynasty-defining inflection point, this time in Bilbao. Naturally, awaiting them are their personal tormenters women’s club football’s preeminent dynasty - 17 league titles in 18 years (with just three league defeats and a single season with double-digit league goals allowed since 2010-11), 10 Coupes de France Féminine, eight Champion League crowns, and six trebles. Yep, Lyon.
Barça Femení’s The Final Frontier
As FC Barcelona authors one blunder after another, Barça Femení provides if not exactly “cover” - there’s no hiding from the guys’ and suits’ cavalcade of fuck-ups - then at least a pure and joyful dominance on which culés can hang their hats.
I’ve contemplated for a while the nature of this team’s dominance and the factors that could potentially reign it in. For many, what this team has accomplished over the past three years and how ruthlessly it’s accomplished it, has culminated in a sense that anything less than ultimate triumph is a disappointment. Where you fall on this matter will inform just how heavily this afternoon’s result (maybe with Mapi??) weighs.
Regardless, the fact remains that, for as well as Chelsea executed, no one in recent years has made Barça Femení look less like Barça Femení than Lyon. Twice. This is the final boss.
This is the time to take the torch.
Força Barça.