Back in April, the margins between Chelsea and Barcelona seemed unbridgeable, 4-1 defeats home and away cementing the sense that European football’s finest club were streaking away from the field. Seven months later and the English champions know just how close they are.
What were the margins Thursday? The inches that Ellie Carpenter somehow contrived to find when it seemed so much easier for the scorer of a brilliant opener to double her tally. The flick of the post that denied Wieke Kaptein off Alyssa Thompson’s delicate touch. The subatomic particles by which Catarina Macario was offside when her header had unleashed delirium at Stamford Bridge.
On many another day, this would have been a win to send a statement to the rest of Europe. Then again, if Chelsea continue to perform at this level, they need not worry too much about that. They will get the points needed for a top-four finish and a swift passage to the quarterfinals. What will matter is the statement sent to Barcelona. This doesn’t look like a team who are semifinal fodder in waiting. If these two meet again, they should do so as evenly matched foes.
Indeed, if anyone will have to adjust it might be Barcelona, who never really found an answer for what Chelsea wanted to do to them. The hosts had judged their game plan to a tee. When Barcelona had the ball at the back, blue shirts converged on central areas, waiting as long as they had to for Cata Coll to get possession moving. If she wanted to tiptoe 15 yards up the pitch, no matter. Chelsea would not be baited into flinching first in the standoff. If they could stay patient, let Barcelona make the first move, they had a good sense of what would happen next. Even a midfield with Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmati can’t pass its way around every roadblock. Sometimes they’d be played through but more infrequently than you might have expected.
When Chelsea did get the ball back, they knew the weak points to hit. Claudia Pina’s justified proclivity to vacate her left wing berth and Esmee Brugts’ commitment to driving up the field opened up a clear avenue for the breakaway. Carpenter charged into it and kept charging until she found herself just inside the penalty area, a ferocious swing of her right boot serving as evidence that sometimes you can’t blame a goalkeeper for being beaten at their near post.
A poacher’s finish off a scrappy corner from Ewa Pajor had Barcelona level but it did not deliver the rhythm that the Catalans had established early on. Their pursuit of it was further disrupted by a lengthy break in play in the first half as broadcast facilities at Stamford Bridge went haywire. Ten minutes in 30-degree conditions is hardly conducive to anyone performing at the highest level and Bonmati and Putellas in particular seemed to ease off after both breaks.
Their first dropped points of the European season will matter little for Barcelona and it would be easy to say that they meandered to the final whistle because they never needed more than the point they clung onto. To do so would be to give discredit to Chelsea though.
Across the field, their organization was exemplary. In a way not dissimilar to how she throttled the Spanish at the Euros, Lucy Bronze would track whichever of Putellas, Pina or Pajor happened to be serving as the left winger in that particular passage of play. Carpenter, the dynamo on Chelsea breakaways, dropped back to ensure that wherever her teammate went, a right back was still on hand.
Should Barcelona get through, then they found Naomi Girma to be at the top of her game. Nights like these call for so much from top players but often what is required can boil down to the simplest things. For Girma, this was a day for proper old school center backing. See ball, clear ball. There’ll be plenty of other opportunities to demonstrate her abilities to progress possession.
On this night, it was more important that Chelsea demonstrate their worth as a rival to Barcelona for the biggest prizes. Their collective responses at the final whistle said just how much there would have been to gain from a win. Sonia Bompastor shook her head, Nathalie Bjorn threw her arms up in frustration. There but for the grace of a few pixels went a win.
And yet in the huddle that soon followed, you sensed a different view was emerging. The heavy favorites to win the Champions League had come to town, perhaps not as the best version of themselves, and Chelsea had been better than them. That may matter a great deal when this competition reaches its decisive games.
