Women´s Champions League: Will the English teams crash the Barcelona, Lyon party?

As we gear up for another edition of the Women’s Champions League, the excitement around this iconic club competition is as tantalising as ever.

This season’s tournament, which starts on Tuesday, brings with it new managers and big moves from some top players, as the best and brightest across women’s European football go toe-to-toe.

Sixteen teams have qualified and will now battle it out to be crowned champions of Europe in Lisbon next year.

The tournament will welcome Celtic and Galatasaray, who have become the first teams from Scotland and Turkiye, respectively, to reach the group stage in this current format.

There are also debutants in the form of Swedish side Hammarby, who turned heads in the qualifying rounds by knocking out last season’s quarter-finalists Benfica.

After trailing in the first leg, Hammarby managed to claim a historic victory. No team had ever previously overturned a first-leg deficit in a Women’s Champions League qualifier.

Barcelona are the reigning champions after they beat Lyon in the final back in May.

The growth and strength of the Women’s Super League has been reflected in this year’s final 16. With Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City all qualifying, England are now only the third nation to have three teams reach the group stage of the competition, with Germany and France having done so previously.

Europe’s best are ready to battle it out, but who are the contenders, and which players could light up the 2024-25 edition?

The main contenders

Holders Barcelona will have a fight on their hands to retain their trophy this season, but they also have a strong chance of making more history themselves.

Barca are striving to become only the second club to win a third consecutive Champions League, and they will also bid to equal Lyon’s record of appearing in five straight finals, with the French side having achieved the feat between 2016 and 2020.

Barca grew into a dominant force under former boss Jonatan Giraldez, who is now coaching Washington Spirit.

Former assistant coach to Giraldez, Pere Romeu, will have to see if he can continue the club’s quest for trophies, but the bar has been set high by that quadruple last season.

Teams will be looking for the chink in the Catalans’ armour. Defensively, Barca were generally excellent last season, though they did have a slight defensive underperformance, conceding 1.6 goals more than would have been anticipated based on their expected goals against (xGA) figures in the Champions League, albeit when discounting own goals, that underperformance dropped to 0.6.

They also had the meanest defence in the competition when it came to clean sheets, keeping six to help them win nine games.

The best sides in front of goal last season were, unsurprisingly, the two teams that reached the final – Barca and Lyon. They netted 36 times each across 11 games apiece.

Lyon, although under new leadership, are the most successful side in the history of the competition, winning eight titles, and they are difficult to look past as the team to beat.

Their free-shooting, free-flowing attacking system under former coach Sonia Bompastor saw them produce a whopping 270 attempts on goal last term, an average of 24.5 per game. Barca (237) were second for shots, and shot conversion rate (15.19%), meanwhile.

Lyon’s xG was a tournament-leading 35.4, while Barca’s 29.11 ranked second – however, Barca greatly overperformed their xG.

Indeed, their 6.89 xG overperformance was the highest positive differential in last season’s competition, proving their finishing was of an exceptionally high standard.

It will not all be about Barca and Lyon, though. Two other former continental champions, Arsenal and Wolfsburg, are sides who will see themselves as ready to dethrone Barca and taste European glory once more.

Wolfsburg are six-time finalists and two-time champions, so they should never be discounted. Nor should Bayern Munich, who have won the Frauen-Bundesliga title in the last two seasons.

Bayern went out in the group stage last season, only winning one of their six games, but they should fare better this time around.

And while they are yet to go all the way in Europe, Chelsea and Manchester City could also be forces to be reckoned with.

English trio to challenge

Bompastor led Lyon to victory as their captain in 2011 and 2012 and as their head coach in 2021, an incredible feat that nobody else has achieved in the tournament’s history.

She now finds herself in charge of English Champions Chelsea and will be keen to lead her new side to their first Champions League title.

Chelsea, who reached the semi-finals, had the best shot conversion rate (15.38%) in the 2023-24 tournament, scoring 20 goals from 130 shots.

Bompastor will hope to build on her own success and knowledge of the competition and become the first manager to lead an English side to European success since Arsenal’s victory in the 2006-07 season.

Despite winning everything there is to win domestically under previous boss Emma Hayes, this is a trophy that has evaded the Blues and they are desperate for success. They lost 4-0 in a humiliating final outing versus Barcelona in 2020-21.

Serial winner Lucy Bronze has been brought into the Chelsea fold by Bompastor, and a huge factor in that transfer was her experience of Champions League success. The ambitious defender will aim to become only the second player, after Conny Pohlers, to win the competition with three different sides, previously lifting the trophy with Lyon and Barcelona.

City, meanwhile, are appearing in the group stages for the first time since the competition’s format was changed in 2021 and Gareth Taylor and his team will be keen to show Europe’s best why they have pushed Chelsea all the way in the WSL in recent seasons.

Last season’s star players

Kadidiatou Diani was the leading scorer in last season’s Champions League, netting eight goals, and she will be as dangerous as ever in Lyon’s attacking line.

Those goals came from 4.77 xG — that 3.23 overperformance was higher than any other player in the competition. She was not only the highest goalscorer, but her finishes were a level above what would have been anticipated based on the quality of chances she had.

Ada Hegerberg is the all-time leading scorer in the competition with 64 goals. However, she underperformed her tournament-leading 7.33 xG by 2.33 last campaign, so there’s scope for improvement for the 29-year-old.

Despite the xG underperformance, she still tallied up an impressive five goals to finish tied for fifth in the charts, along with Caroline Hansen, Tabitha Chawinga, Marie-Yasmine Alidou and Sam Kerr.

Lyon’s Selma Bacha created the most chances in last season’s competition (35), registering 4.12 expected assists (xA), though she only provided two assists in total.

Barcelona’s Hansen (33) was second-highest for chances created, but led the way for xA (4.66) and assists (five), level with her team-mate Aitana Bonmati and just ahead of Bronze and Roma playmaker Manuela Giugliano (both four).

Between the sticks, St. Polten’s Carina Schluter was the busiest goalkeeper, making 43 saves, though Chelsea’s Zecira Musovic boasted the best save percentage (81.82%) of any shot-stopper to play at least 90 minutes.

Jennifer Falk, of BK Hacken, was the best-performing goalkeeper when it came to goals prevented, however, conceding 10, which is 3.85 fewer than would have been anticipated based on the quality of shots she faced, according to Opta’s expected goals on target (xGoT) model.

The groups

Four groups of four teams will battle it out to reach the knockout stages. There are some top ties to look forward to before we get to the last eight, and undoubtedly there will be some surprises along the way.

Group A boasts two former champions with 10 titles between them in Lyon and Wolfsburg. The two sides have met in finals of the tournament on four occasions, with Lyon victorious in three of those instances.

But Wolfsburg, who thrashed Fiorentina in qualifying, have lost some huge names over the summer. Germany midfielder Lena Oberdorf, Poland forward Ewa Pajor and Netherlands defender Dominique Janssen all exited ahead of the new campaign.

Pajor has made a fantastic start to life at Barcelona, scoring six goals already, and generating the highest xG of any player in the top five leagues so far in 2024-25 (6.56).

Roma will join the two giants from Germany and France. Their best finish in the tournament saw them progress to the last eight on their competition debut in 2022-23.

The group’s final side, Galatasaray, battled hard through the qualifying rounds and stamped their mark on the competition by knocking out three-time quarter-finalists Slavia to become the first Turkish team to reach the group stage.

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— UEFA Women’s Champions League (@UWCL) October 7, 2024

Group B has served up a familiar matchup with Chelsea and Real Madrid being drawn together for a third consecutive year.

Dutch Champions Twente will bring an attacking brand of football to the tournament and should not be underestimated. They scored 20 goals to qualify for the group stages. Debutants Celtic, meanwhile, will also look to make their mark.

Group C could be considered the group of death, with former champions Arsenal, Bayern and surprise package Juventus, who caused the biggest upset of the qualifying rounds, going head-to-head.

The Bianconere became the first team to knock out Paris Saint-Germain before the quarter-finals since Tyreso in 2013-14, ending the dreams of English number one Mary Earps after her big move from Manchester United.

Group D will host the most exciting fixture of the group stages as holders Barca take on Man City in the opening game. The teams have met previously in a quarter-final in 2020-21, with Barca going on to win the tournament that year.

St. Polten have qualified for the fourth time in five seasons, and Hammarby have shown they are not scared of the bigger sides by knocking out one of last year’s quarter-finalists Benfica in the qualifying rounds.

The tournament promises to be exciting, with some intriguing storylines to follow from top to bottom.

Will Barcelona win a third straight crown, can Lyon extend their record number of titles, or is it time for an English champion for the first time since 2007? We can’t wait to find out.