*The best of Barcelona's triumph over Real Madrid
With the stands of the Camp Nou practically full, the women's Barcelona sealed their qualification for the Champions League semifinals after beating Real Madrid 5-2 in a vibrant match attended by 91,553 fans, the highest attendance ever recorded for a women's match.
The current champions of the competition had been preparing this historic event for months and the public did not fail them: the culés fans gathered at the stadium managed to surpass the 90,185 that attended the US-China in the 1999 World Cup final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena (California), an absolute record so far for football feminine.
Pushed by their audience, the Barça, who had already left the tie almost sentenced after winning 3-1 in Madrid in the first leg, sealed the pass with another strong result. Mapi León, Aitana Bonmatí, Claudia Pina, Alexia Putellas and Graham Hansen scored Barça's goals, while Real Madrid scored Olga Carmona and Claudia Zornoza.
“It was super magical, the match is over and people didn't want to go home”, celebrated its captain, and winner of the last Golden Ball, Putellas, in statements to DAZN. “There were a lot of people, a lot of girls, what today is undoubtedly historic.”
This homeless Barcelona also exceeded the maximum turnout for a match between clubs, which the Catalans had already achieved in a league clash against Atletico Madrid before the pandemic. The Wanda Metropolitano was almost filled on March 17, 2019 with 60,739 fans on a historic afternoon for a rapidly expanding sport in Spain.
Encouraged by the successful career of its women's team, which seeks to repeat a treble this year, the Catalan club focused on making the first match with the women's audience at Camp Nou (with capacity for 99,000 spectators) out of record. For this, they made almost free tickets available to their members and offered the rest at prices ranging from 9 to 15 euros.
Until now, the 2012 Champions League final played by Frankfurt and Olympique de Lyon in Munich in front of 50,212 spectators had marked the highest attendance in the competition. At the level of European teams, England had already gathered 77,768 people at Wembley in a match against Germany in November 2019.
“We would never have imagined that this was possible, because it just never happened before, and we didn't watch matches on women's football television,” recalled the 24-year-old midfielder Aitana Bonmatí. “I hope this is just a start,” he added after the match.
With information from AFP
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