The spoils were shared at Stamford Bridge between Chelsea and their Champions League torturers Barcelona, but it will be Sonia Bompastor’s side that will be the more frustrated of the two.
It was a battling performance from the home team and Ellie Carpenter’s failure to add her second goal late on from close range will haunt them, as will the substitute Catarina Macario’s narrowly offside effort that had both looked likely to give the Blues all three points.
It is no secret that the Champions League is Chelsea’s white whale. “We all know there’s one thing missing for us,” Millie Bright told the Guardian the preceding week, the defender on the bench for this encounter, with Bompastor favouring a centre-back pairing of Naomi Girma and Nathalie Björn.
Barcelona have been their perennial party poopers, delivering heartbreak in the final in 2021 before knocking the London side out in three back-to-back semi finals in 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25. They have just one win, but that hard fought 1-0 victory against the Catalan giants in Spain was undone in London, and one draw in seven games against the Blaugrana.
At a horrendously cold Stamford Bridge the opening 15 minutes followed a familiar narrative, the visiting team dominating possession and frustrating an unsettled Chelsea with their aggressive press. It was the Blues’ goal against the run of play that triggered a more even encounter. The full-back Carpenter, playing in front of the right-back Lucy Bronze, collected the ball from Aggie Beever-Jones just inside the Barcelona half and raced towards the box unchallenged before she lashed ferociously past Cata Coll. It was a blistering effort and the celebrations were wild, Chelsea taking a lead at home against Barcelona for the first time in four attempts.
The Carpenter-Bronze axis on the right was a potent one, as was the equally rapid combination of Alyssa Thompson and Sandy Baltimore on the left. They nullified the dynamic Barcelona forwards Caroline Graham Hansen and Clàudia Pina, keeping them busy by helping out their own fullbacks as they struggled to contain the wide onslaught.
The goal injected confidence into Bompastor’s side and they created the better chances of the half, but a Barcelona corner helped cancel out Carpenter’s stunning strike, the ball falling kindly for Ewa Pajor, who took a step to her left and fired in. It was the 36th Champions League goal for the Poland forward, who was a runner-up four times in the competition while at Wolfsburg.
There was an unusual pause shortly before the end of the first half, prompting nine minutes added on, with the live feed of the game going down disrupting TV coverage and VAR. The players tried to stay warm on the pitch until the action got back under way.
The referee stops play before a technical issue delayed the Women’s Champions League tie for nine minutes in the first half. Photograph: John Walton/PA
Chelsea attempted to take advantage on the resumption of the game, Thompson trying her luck after a quick attack but she put her effort wide. There was a nervous energy after half-time, the home team’s inability to convert their superior number of shots on target while Barcelona dominated possession a worry as the clock ticked on.
“We need to be efficient and clinical, create opportunities and big chances,” Bompastor had warned. “Maybe in some moments of the game we will suffer and we need to be ready for that, to all be together in those moments,” she told BBC Two.
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It was Carpenter who would attempt to alleviate the Barcelona pressure that dominated the opening 15 minutes of the second half much in the way it had the first, the former Lyon player breaking forward in a move that mirrored her run for the opening goal but this time her effort was low and wide of the far post.
This was far from Barcelona at their finest. A staggering 17 players departed in the summer, some on loan, with only Laia Aleixandri coming in for free from Manchester City following the expiration of her contract. Despite the impact of their finances being tied to those of the crisis-ridden men’s team, the three-time Champions League winners have been rampant, earning a six-point lead at the top of La Liga with 51 goals scored in 11 games.
There was frustration for Chelsea in the 74th minute, celebrations cut short after Macario’s clinical header with her first touch after coming on in place of Beever-Jones deemed offside, the margin tight on replays.
There was further agony when Carpenter put the ball wide of the far post with just Coll to beat from close range on the right after receiving a backheel pass from Macario in a neat one-two.
The draw means Bompastor and Pere Romeu’s sides remain two of the three unbeaten sides, the former earning a draw for the second time and the latter’s perfect start halted. They remain in good positions, Barcelona topping the table on 10 points and Chelsea in sixth on eight.
