all scores

Record Camp Nou crowd lifts Barcelona to Champions League win

img
Alexia Putellas of FC Barcelona scores the team’s fourth goal in the UEFA Women’s Champions League semifinal match. (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Fans showed up and showed out for Barcelona, filling Camp Nou for the club’s 5-1 win against Wolfsburg in the UEFA Champions League semifinals.

Friday’s match drew a historic crowd of 91,648, breaking the world record for the most-attended women’s soccer match ever — which the team had set in its March quarterfinal against Real Madrid.

The first-leg semifinal contest against the German team sold out in just 24 hours, according to the club.

Manchester City star Lucy Bronze addressed Barcelona’s sold-out crowds in an op-ed for GiveMeSport Women, saying the Camp Nou matches “showed that women’s football is evolving.”

“There is a fan base,” she wrote. “And if things are done in the right places at the right time, these are the kinds of things that can come from it – selling out Nou Camp in the Champions League, back to back.”

The same atmosphere that led Barcelona to an emphatic and euphoric win against Real Madrid in the quarterfinal was on full display again Friday, with fans welcoming the team in droves as they entered the Camp Nou campus.

Camp Nou’s palpable support for Barcelona lifted the team to an early, commanding lead over Wolfsburg, with Aitana Bonmatí opening up scoring in the game’s third minute.

A trio of goals from Caroline Graham Hansen, Jennifer Hermoso and Alexia Putella followed to expand Barcelona’s first-half lead, electrifying the Camp Nou crowd.

Barcelona’s unrelenting pressure silenced Wolfsburg and sent the home team into halftime with a 4-0 lead. The German side needed to regroup at the break for any chance at redemption.

Wolfsburg, while slightly more organized in the second half, still appeared stunned following the opening 45-minute thrashing.

Denying Barcelona the shutout, Jill Roord put the visitors on the board in the 70th minute after a long VAR review.

Not to be outdone, Barcelona added to its four-goal tally, with Putellas slotting in a PK from the spot in the 80th minute for her second goal of the match.

Barcelona’s back-to-back record-breaking crowds at Camp Nou show March’s El Clásico was not a fluke but rather a sign of what’s to come.

Next Up: Wolfsburg and Barcelona will face off in the second leg of the Champions League semifinals on Saturday, April 30, at Volkswagen Arena in Germany.