8 hours ago 1

Chelsea 1 Barcelona 4 (agg 2-8) – Quadruple hopes end, system change disaster, Barcelona irrepressible

Chelsea’s hopes of achieving the quadruple ended on a miserable afternoon at Stamford Bridge when they were thumped by Barcelona in the semi-finals of the Champions League.

Trailing 4-1 on aggregate after the first leg, Chelsea had a mountain to climb on home turf but the task of overhauling the deficit soon became all-but impossible as they fell further behind to lose 4-1 on the day, 8-2 on aggregate, to an irrepressible Barcelona side who progressed to their fifth successive Champions League final.

After a bright Chelsea start, Aitana Bonmati opened the scoring in the first half, beating Hannah Hampton at the Chelsea goalkeeper’s near post with a sweetly struck shot. Ewa Pajor scored from close range before Claudia Pina’s brilliant finish into the top corner before the break put Barcelona out of sight against the reigning Women’s Super League leaders who are on the cusp of a sixth straight league title.

Sloppy defending contributed to Barcelona’s fourth, a Salma Paralluelo tap-in in the 90th minute, before Chelsea scored their first through Wieke Kaptein seconds later.

Charlotte Harpur, Megan Feringa and Michael Cox were at Stamford Bridge.

Why this defeat hurts more

Losing in the Champions League semi-finals is never fun, but losing to the same opposition three years running at this stage (and once in the final five years ago) is a withering experience.

But this defeat, a demolition job, is especially draining. Chelsea thought they had cracked the code, or at least assembled a behemoth incapable of falling victim to the code again.

Sonia Bompastor, a serial domestic and European trophy winner with Lyon, replaced Emma Hayes as manager at the start of the season. Two-time Champions League winners Keira Walsh and Lucy Bronze were added to the midfield and back line respectively, a means of plugging all those gaps of inexperience on the big stages. Paris Saint-Germain’s Sandy Baltimore joined the ranks. A million dollars was thrown at USWNT defender Naomi Girma, after the transfer record had already been broken to acquire forward Mayra Ramirez last January to replace forward Sam Kerr after the Australian’s anterior cruciate ligament injury.

As Bompastor led Chelsea through a near flawless domestic season, the prospect of Chelsea finally exorcising their European ghosts felt more tangible, inevitable even, which is why this hurts more.

Chelsea once again failed to beat Barcelona. They also failed to score at Stamford Bridge against them. Once again, Barcelona proved the goalposts shift every year, most often by their design, and Chelsea are left to chase.

Megan Feringa

A change in system results in disaster

Pina justifies her selection

Claudia Pina, lurking on the edge of the box, took one touch to control the ball and another two to get it out of her feet. She wrapped her right foot around the ball with such whip that it grazed the inside of the post, way beyond Hampton’s reach.

It was a superb finish, one of the highest quality from the Champions League’s top goalscorer who, along with her Barcelona team-mates, Patri Guijarro and Mapi Leon, chose not to go to the 2023 World Cup over a long-running dispute with the Spanish football federation (RFEF).

This season, the La Masia graduate, who started at Espanyol’s academy at the age of 12, has come to life in this competition, registering nine goals, including two goals against Wolfsburg, one of which was a phenomenal free-kick.

It was the 23-year-old who hammered the nails in Chelsea’s coffin with her stabbed effort from close range in Barcelona’s 4-1 rout in the first leg. That performance finally earned her a starting spot in place of Salma Paralluelo on the left of Barcelona’s front three and she justified Barcelona head coach’s Pere Romeu’s decision by continuing her impressive finishing at Stamford Bridge.