On Friday, just three weeks after playing there in front of a world record attendance for a women's soccer match, the reigning European champions, FC Barcelona Femení, will once more play a women's Champions League match at Camp Nou when they face the last team to beat them in the competition, VfL Wolfsburg.
Tomorrow's match, the first leg of the semi-final, will be a repeat of the encounter played at the same stage as a one-off match in San Sebastián two years ago when Barcelona dominated territory and possession only to lose by a single Wolfsburg goal against the run of the general play. The German side also won both matches when the two sides met in the 2014 quarter-final. Indeed, the Catalans have never even scored a goal against Wolfsburg.
That 2020 semi-final was incredibly the last game in which FC Barcelona failed to register a goal, scoring at least once in every one of their last 86 matches. Since that night, they went on to win a treble of Spanish league, cup and UEFA
Rolfö remains full of admiration for her former team who have eliminated the top two English sides, Chelsea and Arsenal to reach the last four for the seventh time in a decade. "German teams are always hard to play against" she said. "We know Wolfsburg have been getting great results in the last few weeks. Of course, we need to have respect for them but in the end we need to play our own game and be confident, because we have been great as well. Of course, I can tell them a few things about how they play and what's typical for them but we know they are physical and they like to have a game with a lot of duels and make it intense. That's how it is."
Speaking to me last month, Rolfö identified the areas in which Barcelona had improved since that 2020 semi-final. "You can see physically it is a team that is stronger. That I would say is the big difference from when I played against them. They are also more effective as a team. I think there's so many reasons why the club is so successful."
Engen also played for Wolfsburg in that semi-final and believes that making the most of the scoring opportunities which present themselves will make the difference this time. "I think Barça did well in that game, it was really hard to beat them, they didn't score against Wolfsburg. Hopefully on Friday, we can turn those chances into goals, I think that's going to be super-important."
After attracting 91,553 spectators to Camp Nou for their quarter-final second leg against Real Madrid last month, the highest attendance for any soccer match played in Europe this season, many wondered if they could ever repeat the feat again. Incredibly, they once more sold-out the stadium, with 85,000 tickets snapped up within 24 hours of sales opening. Yesterday, the last 6,000 tickets went on general sale, as of lunchtime today, half of those had been purchased creating the possibility that they may set another world-record crowd figure tomorrow.
Barcelona winger Caroline Graham Hansen, who starred in that game, admitted that "matches like tomorrow's are the games that we all want to play. When we are in pre-season we do hard and boring training sessions without enjoying it so much for days like tomorrow, with the Camp Nou full and 90,000 fans cheering. Everyone is ready."
Hansen was also recruited from Wolfsburg in 2019, so she was in the Barcelona team on the previous occasion they faced her former side. "The last time we lost, and the whole team wants to come back and wants to show everyone what a great team we are. They are a strong team, physically very good, their way of playing is to run and fight and they have very good counter-attacks. We know it will be a fight, if we overcome this we have many possibilities to play our kind of football."
The Norwegian, voted Player of the Match in both legs of the quarter-final against Real Madrid pointed to way the team reacted to going behind in both of those games as evidence of the team's mental fortitude. "The whole team wanted to score goals after that, nobody wanted to lose and we all thought we were going to win."
She also dismissed any notion that having won all 39 matches they have played so far this season, the defending European champions are under extra pressure to reach next month's final to face either Olympique Lyonnais or Paris Saint-Germain in Turin. "Playing at the Camp Nou doesn't make us more nervous than usual. Pressure? We don't have pressure, we play football because we like it and we do it to win."
