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Manchester United v Bayern Munich: Women’s Champion League quarter-final, first leg – live | Women’s Champions League
Key events
Tom Garry
Three sides of this stadium are empty, while one is jam-packed and bustling. Unfortunately, the television cameras are pointing towards the three empty stands. It’s a disappointing turnout, that’s for sure. But higher ticket sales are expected for Saturday’s WSL Manchester derby, back here on the same ground in just a few days’ time, so perhaps that’s the game the home fans have prioritised.
And now Jose Barcala, the Bayern Munich head coach, speaks:
“Pernille Harder is really important. A playmaker. For us it’s so important to have good positional play. She understands positioning better than anyone else and she is so clinical.
“Manchester United has the quality, the individual quality to punish you in transitions. They need a team that is disorganised and they can punish you when are not in the right position. We need to offer structure, positioning and control. Then probably, we have probabilities to get the game.”
Marc Skinner has a chat with Disney+:
“I’m really excited. We’re at a fantastic arena. We’ve created history, I want to see us express ourselves, just express who we are, and it’ll be an exciting game I’m sure.
“Lea Schuller will be important and hopefully knowing how they play with be an advantage … we have to be at our best. We are looking forward to the challenge.
“[It will be about] Riding the moments, momentum. They will create, we will create. I think it’s respecting, but not being in fear or in awe of them. We’re not here by luck. We are here by hard work, graft and commitment.”
Some of us are old enough to remember Manchester United men beating Bayern Munich in 1999:
Full-time: Real Madrid Women 2-6 Barcelona Women
Les jeux sont faits. A thumping win for Barça against their traditional/perennial/bitter (delete as applicable) rivals.
Sonia Bompastor, the Chelsea head coach, said the women’s game needs to be shown “more respect” after the decision to rule out Veerle Buurman’s goal in the first half of the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final was not overturned by the video assistant referee.
Buurman leapt and nodded in and looked to have halved the hosts’ lead, but the referee, Alina Pesu, immediately ruled out the effort for a perceived foul on Laia Codina and the VAR did not deem it a clear and obvious error.
Don’t forget you can email me with your thoughts.
Preferably on tonight’s match.
Now a penalty for Barça with the clock on 88min …
And that’s 6-2. Alexia Putellas with a Diego Maradona-style penalty, waiting for the keeper to move, and dispatching the ball safely into the opposite corner.
For Manchester United there are two changes: Lea Schuller comes in for Elisabeth Terland while Hinata Miyazawa, having just returned from playing in Japan’s Women’s Asian Cup final win against Australia on Saturday, replaces Simi Awujo.
Bayern Munich Women are unchanged from the 5-0 win against Essen on Saturday with Georgia Stanway, formerly of Manchester City, lining up as one of two defensive midfielders in a 4-2-3-1 formation.
It’s raining goals in Spain. It’s Real Madrid 2-5 Barcelona now.
Linda Caicedo just scored her second of the night for Madrid, and it was a belter, arrowed into the top corner from the edge of the box after a driving run at a backpedalling Barcelona defence.
Tom Garry
The local weather has provided a proper ‘welcome to Manchester’ for the Bayern Munich players today, with not only a chilling, blustery wind and frequent heavy showers but even a sudden burst of hail, which pounded on to the top of my car like pebbles a couple of hours ago as I was driving along the M56 towards the stadium. There is a freezing-cold feel in the air and rumours of an overnight frost on the way. So it will feel like this game is being played in January rather than late March, and you wonder whether that can benefit the hosts. Everyone in the stands has their hat, their scarves and their gloves back on again.
I’ll expand on those teams shortly, but now, an update from our intrepid reporter at Old Trafford …
Teams
Manchester United Women (4-3-3): Tullis-Joyce; Lundkvist, Le Tissier, Turner, Rolfo; Zigiotti Olme, Miyazawa, Naalsund; Park, Schuller, Malard. Substitutes: Rendell, Middleton-Patel, George, Terland, Awujo, Riviere, Anderson.
Bayern Munich Women (4-2-3-1): Mahmutovic; Gwinn, Viggosdottir, Gilles, Simon; Stanway, Kakounan; Dallmann, Caruso, Kett; Harder. Substitutes: Grohs, Ballisager, Eriksson, Tanikawa, Bidas, Dunst, Imade, Zahringer, Kreuzpaintner.
Real Madrid 1-4 Barcelona is a latest score in tonight’s earlier kick-off.
That’s ONE-FOUR to Barça. Remarkable.
Ewa Pajor (two), Esmee Brugts and Irene Paredes have scored the goals for Barcelona. One or two more and they’ve put the tie to bed before the second leg.
Tom Garry
It is no exaggeration to describe the next seven days as the most significant week of fixtures in the history of the Manchester United women’s team, as they contest their first European quarter-final with a crucial derby in between.
Debutants in the Champions League main draw, Marc Skinner’s side now have three box-office matches in huge arenas, starting with the first leg of their quarter‑final against Bayern Munich on Wednesday at Old Trafford, as the runaway Frauen‑Bundesliga leaders arrive in England hoping to illustrate their own European title credentials. The stage is set for a thriller.
Preamble
On their debut in the main draw of the Women’s Champions League Manchester United Women now find themselves facing one of the juggernauts of European football. It doesn’t get much tougher than a two-legged quarter-final encounter against Bayern Munich: but the manager Marc Skinner and his players are up for it.
“We have to be ready to make history,” Skinner said. “We challenge ourselves every day in training to be the team that competes in quarter-finals – and then hopefully a semi-final after that. We know the respect we have between Bayern Munich and Manchester United as two clubs – but when we go on to the field it’ll be the winner takes all. We have to manage both ties, show our maturity, but the challenge of it is fantastic … the energy around these games just hits differently.”
Skinner’s side defeated Paris Saint-Germain in the league phase and have kept eight clean sheets in 12 matches in the tournament, including qualifying rounds, so Bayern and the former Chelsea forward, Pernille Harder, will not underestimate the task ahead. United finished sixth in the league phase, progressing to the last eight with a resounding 5-0 aggregate win against Atlético Madrid Women in their playoff. Tonight’s first leg, and the second at the Allianz Arena in Munich next Wednesday, will be their biggest test yet.
Kick-off: 8pm UK time
NASWUT’s leader said there is a “ticking time bomb” if male pupils cannot be helped with misogyny.
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Manchester City v Liverpool kicks off FA Cup quarter-finals, Fernández latest and more – matchday live | FA Cup
Key events
Billy Munday caught the return of Roy Hodgson to Bristol City after 44 years of absence.
Football has changed in the two years since Hodgson left Crystal Palace, including “the cult of the long throw”, with Charlton’s Harry Clarke launching a ball into the box within moments of kick-off here. “I only came across that in the 80s when we played Wimbledon,” he said.
Per Reuters, it’s a big day in Miami for MLS club Inter Miami.
Inter Miami will open the home Lionel Messi helped build when they host Austin FC on Saturday night.
The match will be the first at the Herons’ permanent home, the 26,700-seat Nu Stadium, constructed slightly northwest of downtown Miami.
While approval for construction came before Messi joined Miami (3-1-1, 10 points) and MLS in the summer of 2023, it was always billed as a project meant to attract the game’s biggest stars. And now the man considered the game’s greatest living player will lead his team there.
“Honestly, it’s spectacular getting to see the new home,” Messi said this week in Spanish. “The new stadium turned out incredible, and it’s really special to be able to experience it. We’d been eager to play there, to make our debut, to finally be competing there. And now the moment has arrived.“
We didn’t see Harry Kane this week for England, but Barney Ronay has been keeping an eye on the great man.
The Premier League does feel a distance away, doesn’t it? Perhaps the FA Cup and European action in midweek can salve our thirst for now.
don’t recall a mid-season period like this with almost 3 full weeks between PL matches, and none over an easter weekend. This afternoon’s early match should be good, you’d guess that neither want to go to penalties, but whether as has been suggested the next 5 or so matches for Liverpool decide Scot’s future is debatable ie he’s either staying or going, nobody knows which just yet but if he goes then who is in the frame to replace him…and what does his replacement do if he ain’t comfortable with Liverpool’s set up re their new and rather expensive recent signings
said before the start of this season that I’d take top 4 and a decent domestic cup run, still holding to that but actually and given how they’re played, and how they’ve not played too often, this season maybe events 4 isn’t realistic…Liverpool can be expected to concede so yet again they may have to outscore their opponents and that issue, amongst a few, needs addressing before next season
The Women’s FA Cup is being played, too. Suzanne Wrack runs the rule over the ties.
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Arsenal v Brighton, Sunday 1pm
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Charlton v Liverpool, Sunday 2.30pm
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Chelsea v Tottenham, Monday 1.30pm
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Birmingham v Manchester City, Monday 5pm
Arsenal will come up against a goalkeeper on loan from Bayern Munich when they play Southampton in the cup later today. Ben Fisher spoke to Daniel Peretz.
Peretz was inspired by the Germany goalkeeper as a boy – he had a giant photo of the 2014 World Cup-winner on his bedroom wall – but in Bavaria Neuer, who turned 40 last week, morphed into a mentor. “[It went] from admiring the players, to them becoming my friends and my teammates.
“I watched every single save [Neuer] made and then he was with me day by day and he became a friend,” Peretz says, recalling the emotions of their first encounter. “I was sweating all over, so nervous that I could not speak. I had goosebumps, everything.”
More Liverpool, more Slot. More Salah.
Slot, however, insisted he would not have handled the situation with the club legend any differently. He explained: “Yes [he is happy with how he managed it]. I look back at this season thinking that I made a few decisions that could have been better, but I’m not talking about this specific thing with Mo. I don’t regret many things I did during our one-and-a-half years together, or just longer.
Ed Aarons takes up genealogy in this deep dive on the Arsenal family.
George Male was a key figure in Arsenal’s dominant side of the 1930s, helping them win five league titles in eight seasons. Known for his consistency and leadership in defence, he remains one of the club’s historic figures and is pictured in two places outside the Emirates Stadium. Male went on to become a long-serving youth-team coach and then a scout at Arsenal after retiring, and is remembered as the man who discovered Charlie George, who was part of the famous Double-winning team of 1970-71.
That Easter double-header got off to a great start for Frank Lampard’s Coventry. And: Millwall in the Premier League? It may well be happening.
Mikel Arteta wasn’t holding back in his press conference, either. This on the Carabao Cup.
During the first part, it’s like a ball of poison that you have in your tummy,” said Arteta when asked whether he had spent the international break stewing over the final.
“Take that out as quick as possible. How can I use that to make myself better, to make the team better? There is a part that I think has to be there and I think this is not going to go in the next 30 years. Because when you have the opportunity to win a final in Wembley, you have to get it done. So that has to stay there.
Talking of players linked with Madrid and City v Liverpool, Rodrí and Guardiola from Friday.
As mentioned in the preamble, today’s is a huge game for Liverpool. Andy Hunter has run the rule over the Arne Slot regime.
Let’s start with that Chelsea story. Ben Bloom was at the Liam Rosenior press conference while Jacob Steinberg has analysed the latest Cobham crisis.
Preamble
Good morning, football. Happy Easter, you happy eaters.
We’re up for the FA Cup, and it’s the last eight, with a huge game between Manchester City and Liverpool starting the weekend’s quartet of matches. Perhaps that’s not as amped up as it might have been, with both teams having tough seasons by contrast to previous successes but: City won the Carabao Cup in style and Liverpool look to rescue something from their season.
So, the games today are:
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Manchester City v Liverpool, 12.45pm
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Chelsea v Port Vale, 5.15pm
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Southampton v Arsenal, 8pm
With the EFL being played on Good Friday and Easter Monday, there’s a lack of action in England’s 92. But: there’s action in Scotland and across Europe, and a series of stories to look at, including L’affaire Fernandez at Chelsea.
Join me.
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