2–8, 6–0, 1–9.
You wouldn’t immediately believe the readings to be football results, but they are believable.
The final round of the group stage of the Women’s Champions League continued with the same theme that has been seen in Europe’s top competition throughout the fall: big wins and big level differences.
The group stage ended on Thursday, but the last runners-up already made it on Wednesday. None of the teams that made it to the semifinals were a big surprise: Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Lyon, PSG, AS Roma and Wolfsburg will continue the competition in March.
– Although the level of women’s football in the big picture is expanding all the time, the biggest countries, leagues and teams are getting stronger at a much faster pace. England, Spain, Germany and France are accelerating their own pace. It is gratifying that, in addition to the perennially successful Juventus, AS Roma has joined, Urheilu’s expert Jonne Kunnas comment.
The municipality considers the large number of results and the level differences in the competition to be worrying, but also reminds us of the structure of the competition.
– This does not include the 16 best countries in Europe. If there was a favorable lottery and suitable opponents on the path of the Champions, that’s why, for example, Vllaznia has been able to participate, Kunnas reminds.
The Women’s Champions League was renewed for last season, when the group stage was played for the first time in the series.
There are two ways to advance to the group stage: Champions path and league path. (you switch to another service) In practice, the champions of leagues outside the top European leagues qualified along the champions’ path, while the teams ranked second and third in the top leagues qualified along the league path.
For example, KuPS was close to joining the group stage through the path of the Champions, but the Austrian team St. Pölten won after the follow-up match with 3–2 on aggregate.
Pölten finished third in its group and lost, among others, to Wolsfburg 2–8 and Roma 0–5, but played a draw and claimed victory over Slavia Prague. Albanian champion Vllaznia was at the bottom of the group with zero points and a goal difference of 1-28.
Zurich, which was placed in the same group as Arsenal, Lyon and Juventus, also had a rough fate: in six matches it managed to score twice, while it rang 26 times in its own.
– The system distorts a bit, because teams like Manchester City and Ajax have been left out of the other path. City lost to Real Madrid and Ajax played a really tight series with Arsenal, Kunnas reminds.
The municipality suggests that the series system could be modified in the future in order to avoid crushing results.
– We would make sure that the really best teams were involved. Everyone should still have the opportunity to participate, so that the series doesn’t turn into a Super League with only teams from certain countries participating.
– If there were more teams from the top countries, the games would be more even and interest would be aroused, Kunnas spins.
Finnish history at Camp Nou
The third team left in the zero club was a Finnish national team player Ria Öling’s represented by Swedish champion Rosengård.
However, Öling was among the few Finnish players who played at the legendary Camp Nou when the team played in Barcelona on Wednesday. As expected, the match turned out to be a display from the home team, and the final score was 6–0.
Rosengård scored three goals in the Champions League and conceded 20. On the other hand, the opposition was also tough: Barcelona is perhaps the best club team at the moment without Also from Alexia Putella and Bayern Munich is also buzzing with world stars. The Swedish club played even matches against the Portuguese Benfica.
The Swedish Damallsvenskan was still the world’s top league a few years ago, and Umeå, for example, played in the final of the Uefa Cup, the predecessor of the Champions League, five times in the early 2000s.
How do Nordic clubs keep up with the development?
– It’s a million euro question. Rosengård was the only team involved when Koge and Häcken dropped out in the qualifiers. Barcelona and Bayern Munich are the best teams in the world, but for Benfica I expected that Rosengård would have been able to play more evenly for points. However, the result was two losses, which is worrying, Kunnas commented.
The municipality sees staying in the competition primarily as a matter of resources.
The national teams of Sweden, Norway and Denmark are doing well, so you could think that the player development is okay.
– Then we come to develop and increase the resources of the club teams, so that it is good for the players to be in the club and everything else in the club organization works around them. There, the differences with the top teams in England, Spain and France are huge, and they do not attract players to come to the clubs or stay there.
But how will the situation develop in the next few years?
Kunnas believes that development will follow the trends in men’s football.
– The big clubs continue to invest and the big leagues grow. When everything goes forward, there will be wider competition on the lower side, and it will be a big challenge for the Nordic countries to keep up with it, especially for Finland. A lot of things would have to happen to pick up the pace.
Kunnas believes that the competition will become more equal in Spain, Germany, England, France and Italy. Kunnas points out that also on the women’s side, the clubs are divided a little like the men’s into the Champions League, European League and Conference League clubs.
– The leagues and clubs on the next level after the Champions League are growing there. Of course, one factor for that from UEFA is that if the talked about European League model were to come, it would help teams and clubs to develop their operations. Cultivator’s money and others help smaller clubs to compete genuinely, Kunnas concludes.