BARCELONA, Spain: Barcelona recovered from a missed penalty by Alexia Putellas to take a commanding 4-1 lead over Chelsea in the Women\u2019s Champions League semifinals on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Putellas had her penalty kick saved by Chelsea goalkeeper Hannah Hampton in the 12th minute but the Catalan club rallied with a pair of goals by substitute Claudia Pina and one each from Ewa Pajor and Irene Paredes.<\/p>\n
Sandy Baltimore scored for Chelsea.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo winning scoreline is enough,\u201d Barcelona coach Pere Romeu said. \u201cThere\u2019s huge evidence in soccer that you can\u2019t ever rely on a first-leg lead. We are going to have a beautiful battle over there at Stamford Bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chelsea will host the return semifinal leg next Sunday and the winner on aggregate will advance to the final in Lisbon next month.<\/p>\n
It was the eighth straight win for defending champion Barcelona in the European women\u2019s competition. It has scored 40 goals across those eight consecutive wins since losing 2-0 to Manchester City.<\/p>\n
Barcelona and Chelsea are meeting in the last four for the third consecutive season. Barcelona has advanced each time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe in my team and my players, 100 percent,\u201d Chelsea coach Sonia Bompastor said. \u201cIt\u2019ll be difficult, but the main goal is to score early in the return leg. In football everything is possible, so let\u2019s try to win the game and, if we score early, maybe we can put Barcelona under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pajor opened the scoring in the 35th and Pina added to the lead in the 70th, not long after entering the match.<\/p>\n
Baltimore pulled the visitors closer four minutes later, but Paredes gave Barcelona a two-goal lead again in the 82nd.<\/p>\n
Pina added a fourth in the 90th at the Johan Cruyff stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m on the bench, we\u2019ve already spent a whole week analyzing a rival like Chelsea,\u201d Pina said. \u201cYou have lots of ideas in your head. When the game goes on, you progress those ideas and look at where your teammates are already creating gaps in the opponents\u2019 defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the other semifinal series, Lyon weathered a second-half rally by Arsenal to claim a 2-1 away win on Saturday, putting the record eight-time champions on course for another Women\u2019s Champions League title match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BARCELONA, Spain: Barcelona recovered from a missed penalty by Alexia Putellas to take a commanding 4-1 lead over Chelsea in the Women\u2019s Champions League semifinals on Sunday. Putellas had her penalty kick saved by Chelsea goalkeeper Hannah Hampton in the 12th minute but the Catalan club rallied with a pair of goals by substitute Claudia …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79916,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79902\/revisions\/79916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}