The inexorable comeback began with Barcelona Femení at their apparent lowest, down multiple goals in a Champions League final for the third time in five years.
For half a decade, they’d been the ascendant force in women’s soccer. They’d built a superteam around homegrown stars. They’d drawn record-smashing crowds and demonstrated the sport’s limitless potential. They’d won Spanish league titles with goal differentials over 100 and seemed untouchable — but they had one flaw, one hurdle between their greatness and undisputed preeminence, at the final stage of Europe’s top club competition.
And here it was again. Barca entered Saturday’s final as prohibitive favorites over Wolfsburg. By halftime, they were 2-0 down, and their fans, a majority of the 33,147 inside Eindhoven’s Philips Stadion, were stunned.
But by full-time, they were 3-2 winners and European champions and unquestionably the queens of their sport.
For 45 minutes, ever since Ewa Pajor’s third-minute goal, Barca’s women were questioned. By the 50th minute, they were level, and an eventual triumph seemed inevitable. Patri Guijarro, the embodiment of versatility, turned in a clever team goal less than three minutes into the second half. Two minutes later, she swept into the penalty box for another.
Wolfsburg held out for 20 minutes thereafter, then self-destructed under unbearable Barca pressure. Fridolina Rolfö pounced on a mess in the penalty box. The side-netting rippled, and everybody wearing blaugrana exploded. The comeback was complete.
Barca had been here before and crumbled. In 2019, they conceded four goals to Lyon in 30 minutes. In 2022, it was three in 33. But this team, this superteam, was too good and battle-tested. They’d stormed to the 2021 Champions League title, and they’d come to Eindhoven to do it again.
Even as they dug themselves into the 2-0 hole, they flowed forward like only they can. They were structured yet fluid, calm yet incisive and mostly clean on the ball. They bungled chances, and Wolfsburg put out fires, but openings and opportunities were there. Halftime stat sheets were remarkably one-sided — in favor of Barca — in every category except the one that ultimately mattered.
But the patterns continued, and the goals came, and the blue-red flags started waving. Barca fans resumed their singing, creating a beautiful soundtrack for a special afternoon.
Their hearts fluttered in stoppage time, at least twice, when Wolfsburg threatened to write an alternative script. But Barca survived and erupted at the sound of the final whistle. Bench players spilled onto the field and bounded around in a joyous circle. Some 45 minutes after the game, against a backdrop of confetti, they were still celebrating with thousands of traveling fans.
Because this was the culmination, the rightful culmination of their rise from underfunded afterthought to the throne in less than a decade.
At halftime, there had been flashbacks — “a big flashback from last final,” winger Carolina Graham Hansen admitted. But she and her teammates, staring into that 2-0 hole, turned to their talent and decided: “Not gonna happen again.”
