Barcelona sealed a quadruple as they clinched their third Girls’s Champions League title by beating fellow European heavyweights Lyon 2-0.
Aitana Bonmati and Alexia Putellas, each Ballon d’Or winners, with Barca’s heroes in Bilbao on Saturday.
Bonmati opened the scoring within the 63rd minute and, after surviving an onslaught of Lyon stress, Barca made certain of a well-known victory in stoppage time – Putellas lashing residence together with her left foot after a sweeping counter-attack.
It marks Barca’s first-ever win over Lyon, as they turned the primary group since Arsenal in 2007 to win 4 trophies in a single season.
Lyon and Barca went into Saturday’s last in Bilbao having scored 70 targets between them on this season’s Champions League.
But it was a cagey first half, with Barca’s Caroline Graham Hansen trying the more than likely to spark the match into life.
That modified simply after the hour when Bonmati, final 12 months’s Ballon d’Or winner, noticed a close-range cross-shot divert in off the unlucky Vanessa Gilles, after a slick transfer had put the Spain worldwide by means of down the left-hand facet of the world.
Lyon, the eight-time European champions, might have discovered themselves 2-0 down quickly after, however Selma Bacha made a significant problem to disclaim Graham Hansen what would have been a deserved aim.
The French giants aimed to make their defender’s good work rely, with substitute Ada Hegerberg coming into the fray.
Hegerberg, the all-time main scorer within the Girls’s Champions League headed over from her greatest probability, as Barca’s defenders – and goalkeeper Catalina Coll, who took a nasty hit to the pinnacle – fought stoically to clear their strains.
And Lyon’s hopes have been extinguished as one other tremendous Barca transfer noticed the ball labored again to Putellas within the space, and he or she unleashed an unstoppable effort into the roof of the web.
AITANAAAAAA
Barça lead in Bilbao! #UWCLfinal || #UWCL pic.twitter.com/zsMB8xHXsJ
— UEFA Girls’s Champions League (@UWCL) Could 25, 2024
Quadruple queens
For the primary time in 17 years, and the primary time because the rebranding of the Girls’s Champions League, a group has received three home trophies and the European crown.
This Barca facet, coached by Jonatan Giraldez, are a particular bunch.
They’ve scored 129 targets in Liga F this season, successful 27 of their 28 video games and drawing the opposite, conceding simply 9 occasions, and now they’ve a 3rd Champions League title within the house of 4 years.
Bonmati and Putellas, their Ballon d’Or-winning duo, served up the important thing moments, however the entire group delivered a stellar efficiency to lastly finish their hoodoo towards Lyon.
Bompastor bows out?
Lyon boss Sonia Bompastor is predicted to affix Chelsea forward of subsequent season, because the Blues’ substitute for the departing Emma Hayes.
The 43-year-old has had an unbelievable tenure at Lyon, successful the Division 1 Female on three events and the Champions League in 2021-22.
Regardless of falling quick on the last hurdle this time, she’s going to go away a membership legend.
