Manchester City fired out a strong signal of their potential to go deep into the Women’s Champions League this season as they stunned the holders Barcelona with a world-class performance to win their opening group-stage game.
On a night when the technical standard of both teams’ football was a joy to watch, a goal in each half from Naomi Layzell and Khadija Shaw gave the English side a memorable victory that will go down in the club’s history as one of their greatest to date.
After three consecutive seasons of either failing to progress through the qualifying rounds or failing to earn a European place altogether, this was City’s first appearance in the group stages of this competition since the format was tweaked to introduce groups in 2021. The captain Alex Greenwood said on Tuesday that her team belonged here. This performance certainly suggested that statement had merit.
After such a long wait to return to European women’s football’s top club competition, the task of facing the team that won the title in both of the past two seasons and reached five of the past six European finals had looked a daunting one. Yet City, rather than looking fazed, came out with a point to prove. The hosts set the tone inside the opening minute, pressing the Barcelona defence so intensely from kick-off that they were forced into conceding a throw-in immediately.
Even the release of the lineups had brought a few gasps in the media working area before the game. All of Barcelona’s big names were starting. Aitana Bonmatí, the Ballon d’Or winner. Alexia Putellas, the queen of Spanish football. Keira Walsh, the England midfield metronome. And by including Bonmatí, Walsh, the Sweden wing-back Fridolina Rolfö, the lethal Norway winger Caroline Graham Hansen and centre-back Mapi León, the visitors had five of the top eight players from 2023’s Guardian ‘top 100’ women’s footballers in their starting XI. It looked ominous.
It was therefore perhaps the perfect twist that it should be a 20-year-old England youth international, making only her second Champions League appearance after a summer transfer from Bristol City, who should provide the game’s opening goal. Layzell looked as shocked as everybody else, after she bundled the ball home at the back post after a corner.
It was the first goal of her entire senior career, let alone her first for City, and this was quite some match to score it in. Thrust into team for the biggest night of her career so far and handed the daunting task of having to mark the former Ballon d’Or winner Putellas, as well as keep an eye out for Rolfö’s overlapping runs down Barcelona’s left flank, Layzell started somewhat nervously and made a couple of slightly sloppy errors in the first three minutes, but from then onwards in the first half, she thrived, alongside 10 other City players producing an opening 45 minutes to savour.
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The quality of football from both teams was higher than the Joie Stadium – which was sold out – has been used to in recent years. And despite being forced into losing possession by City’s work rate, Barcelona’s threats were still abundantly clear. Only the width of the post prevented Graham Hansen from scoring, and only a stunning goalline clearance from Laia Aleixandri denied the visitors after a mistake from Vivianne Miedema.
The Netherlands forward Miedema was presented with a free header, early in the second half, and a glorious chance to make it 2-0, but her glancing effort dropped wide. Would the hosts be made to pay for not taking their opportunities? Would they, after all their hard work off the ball, run out of energy late in the game, against the slickest passing unit in the sport? Barcelona began testing their resolve in the way only Barcelona can. Putellas forced Aleixandri into another outstanding block. Overloads and one-twos were putting Gareth Taylor’s team’s defending under the microscope.
Yet, just as the Barcelona pressure appeared to be mounting so high an equaliser felt inevitable, the Jamaica striker Shaw delivered the perfect sucker punch at the other end, scrapping to win the ball from a Layzell pass and then rolling the ball beyond Cata Coll, sparking scenes of jubilation in the stands, and providing a scoreline that will make all of European women’s football take notice.