Chelsea Top Women’s Champions League Group With Win In Madrid

Chelsea defeated Real Madrid 2-1 on Tuesday to clinch their place as group winners after Catarina Macario scored two penalties in five second-half minutes.

On the final matchday of Group B, Chelsea were given the opportunity to score six points clear of their opponents when Caroline Weir’s early opener for the hosts was introduced at half-time.

Sonia Bompastor, the manager of Chelsea, said, “We were not very happy with our first half performance.”

At half-time, we all sat down together and declared that we had no choice. We have a strong mentality, and that’s important to win games”.

Real advanced to the quarter-finals as group winners on goal difference with Weir’s dinked finish in the seventh minute.

The pool would have been decided on goal difference across the group stage as a whole if the match had ended with Real winning 1-0, both Chelsea and them having won their home game against the other by a one-goal margin if the Blues had won the match 3-2 in October. The aggregate result would have been 3-3 with the resultant score tied at 3-3.

However, it ultimately didn’t come down to such thin margins, as Macario leveled six minutes after entering the game before leading the charge again in 56 minutes.

“Macario is a world-class player, she changed the game. She showed a lot of confidence by scoring those two penalties”, said Bompastor.

The player who gave the English champions a chance to regain control of the tie was Real captain Olga Carmona, who scored the winning goal in Spain’s 2023 World Cup clash against England.

Before being penalized for a handball in the box, she felled Macario to concede the first spot-kick.

With the outcome, Chelsea has now won nine of their last nine Champions League group games.

In the pool’s other match, Dutch side Twente condemned Celtic to a sixth defeat in six outings as they won 3-0 in Enschede.

With Wolfsburg already in control of Group A, eight-time champions Lyon take on two-time champions Wolfsburg in the next game.

Source: Channels TV