Women's Champions League Final

Les Fenottes: Champions of Europe

Lyon 2-0 Potsdam (26:05:11)

You wait a couple of years for an EFW report on women's football, and then two come along at once. After yesterday's look at the FA Cup Final, here's Calum Mechie on the Champions League Final....

It was my aim to write about this game on its own terms, without continual comparison with the men’s game, and I will do so – in a paragraph or two.

It would be remiss, in the period between the two UEFA Champions League finals, of me not to mention the huge disparity that characterizes football’s gender divide. On Saturday evening, Wembley (capacity 90,000) will be full to the brim of punters who have each paid at least £175 for the privilege. On Thursday night, Craven Cottage (capacity 25,700) was around half-full; this in spite of tickets being priced at a very friendly £5 a pop. UEFA is a consummate marketing machine and they know the value of their product. The huge gap in the affordability of access to these two flagship events is a sorry indictment of UEFA’s estimation of the quality of one half of that product.

Think of it like this, Platini and his cronies are sufficiently brazen to charge a frankly ludicrous £26 ‘administration fee’ on top of the already painful price of a ticket to the men’s final because they know that people will pay it. That the same amount would get you five (5! FIVE!) actual, tangible tickets (as opposed to the abstract, ethereal and most probably non-existent phenomena of ‘admin’) shows how little faith they have in the women’s game. It’s a disrespectfully token amount: ‘Obviously we’re going to lose on this one, but we’ve got to charge something’. This price is so low, remember the game’s in London where theatre tickets start at 10 times that amount, that it probably discouraged as many potentially interested punters as it attracted. 

All of this is a massive shame. Craven Cottage is a fun place to watch football and this was a brilliantly entertaining game.

My evening started with Tube delays. It took me the best part of two hours to get from Swiss Cottage to Ealing Broadway. I know! Unbelievable right? So annoying, I don’t know how/why we put up with it. Blah blah blah etc. etc.

Anyway, it had been pissing it down beforehand and some stations had flooded (hence the delays), so my time spent underground allowed me to compose the following joke, which was to be my opening sentence: ‘Apparently, not even God gives a shit about the Women’s UEFA Cup Final and has released the last six weeks’ worth of pent up rain upon it this evening’. Great isn’t it? Unfortunately/Fortunately the weather improved and I didn’t get to use it…

Apart from spawning comic gold (see above), the rain delay seriously curtailed my pre-match drinking. Which was limited to a (very) swift pint of something called ‘Junction’ in a non-descript, but not cheap, pub on the Fulham Palace Road. The sun had come up by this point, so we were able to enjoy our drinks outside; which is always nice isn’t it?

Outside the ground the atmosphere was wonderfully genial. A personal highlight was when I endeared myself to two old boys in luminous jackets, volunteers presumably (must keep costs down!), by asking cheekily where ‘the statue’ was, being stonily informed that it was ‘that way’ before lightening the mood by clarifying that ‘I meant Johnny, not Michael – come on lads!’ Oh how we laughed.

Of course, we really were only interested in seeing the abominable shrine to one of humanity’s most shameful creations (Michael, not Johnny) but I now had a ‘rep’ to protect, so we wandered off in the direction of Johnny Haynes and our seats (don’t worry, we snuck back later).

THE statue

I didn't get in here

Research

We were heartwarmingly, but equally unbearably, situated right in front of a group of around ten 10-14 year-old girls (I’m not very good at guessing young girl’s ages – a trait perhaps attributed once or twice to a certain famous pop-star). These seemed to be a football team, and their near incessant high-pitched shrieking (‘ooh… it’s a corner. ooh… it’s a corner’; ‘the referee’s a tomato’ – she actually sort of was, more later) was punctuated by some occasionally telling commentary (‘she has a good first touch, Miss’). These were exactly the type of people the game should (but didn’t really) attract – although the 8 o’clock kick-off time probably did some damage here – and they seemed to really, really enjoy themselves. Which is great (though annoying).

Although, as I’ve already said, the game was very exciting, the first-half took a bit of time to get going. Lyon’s quick and skillful winger Elodie Thomis carried most of the early running, and although she tired in the second half her link-up play with the magnificent Swedish centre forward Lotta Schelin was one of the principal reasons for Lyon’s sharper attacking edge throughout. It was through their combination play that Lyon won the corner from which they opened the scoring, Wendie Renard bundling home after Sarholz in the Potsdam goal had kept out the original effort. The girls behind us were particularly delighted by the identity of the goalscorer. Renard, with her superb bonce, stands out and seemed to be their favourite player.

Renard: An exceptionally popular hairdo

My favourite player (though Lyon’s Camille Abily won the Player of the Match award) was Amandine Henry, who anchored Lyon’s midfield three with a mixture of astute positioning, combative tackling and neat passing. She and Schelin looked the most technically accomplished players, and Lyon’s victory was based on their shared ability to dictate the pace of the game.

That’s not to say, however, that Potsdam were completely overran. Lyon’s first goal came in the 29th minute and the second didn’t arrive until the last five minutes. In the interim period their star Fatmire Bajramaj (top scorer Yuki Nagasoto missed out through injury) showed incredibly quick feet and lovely touch in creating a number of chances; two particularly presentable examples squandered by players I unfortunately couldn’t identify (one of them could have been Mittag, who had a really poor game).

The hour between the two goals was fairly heroic. To say that referee Dagmar Damkova (yes, she’s a she too) let the game flow would be an enormous understatement as even blows to the head were deemed insufficient justification for a blown whistle. Essentially, she blew for disruptive fouls of a cynical nature and very little else. This was not because of unusually dainty tackling; far from it, tackles were flying in all over the shop and players showed an incredible readiness to go to ground in pursuit of possession, but not in pursuit of free-kicks (they wouldn’t have got them anyway). For a while, it looked as though the physically superior German side were going to use the veggie-fruitlike referee’s leniency to their advantage with Thomis, in particular, on the end of some seriously hefty challenges. Things never got out of hand however and it was to the players’ credit that every challenge was rebounded from and responded to with a grin and a handshake.

That said, it would have been nice to see the Lyon phsyio (possibly Europe’s fastest almost-bald man) sprint into action on more than the one occasion on which he was required. On the other hand, the referee did fall over and you can’t have it all.

Almost-bald Physio (right), a very very fast man; and look! A Female ‘Lino’, whatever next…

Incredibly, even after substitute Lara Dickenmann rounded off a neat move by absolutely shellacking the ball beyond Sarholz, Potsdam manager Bernd Schröder didn’t make a single substitution. I really don’t know what to say about that, any ideas?

At full-time the Lyon bench sprinted out to celebrate and the entire squad ran over to dance in front of the area of the stand dedicated to their small but passionate support. They then climbed the stairs into the stands together, which is the best way to receive a trophy. This was handed to them by UEFA president Michel Platini, who I hope enjoyed the game and deemed a fiver exceptionally good value for such entertaining fare*.

I certainly, certainly, did.

Trophy

* I mean ‘fare’ here in a firmly metaphorical sense. The actual fare on offer, sampled by me in the form of a ‘gourmet beef pie’, was absolutely repugnant. For some reason it was wrapped in some form of cellophane – how was it cooked, how on Earth was it cooked? – and was so greasy that I had to skip the post-match pint in order to run home to my toothbrush: so much grease, why oh why won’t it come off….

Yuck

Yuck, Yuck

You can follow Calum and European Football Weekends on Twitter

Calum is the Editor of Good Feet for a Big Man

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The FA Women's Cup Final

The Female Of The Species

Arsenal 2-0 Bristol Academy (21:05:11)

To our eternal shame, we've yet to feature the women's game here on European Football Weekends - until now. Putting that to rights is Ryan Keaney, Editor of The First Eleven who had the pleasure of visiting The FA Women's Cup Final in Coventry.....

Picture the scene. 10:22am, Saturday 21st May 2011, London Euston station.

A tension fills the air. Two AFC Wimbledon fans peer up at the screens to check the time of departure for their train to Manchester. Neither says anything. They can't quite vocalise how they feel. They don’t want to. There is too much trepidation. Too much hope. The taller one, the one on the right, mumbles something about going to Burger King and sulks away. I'm one of those two men. I’m not even travelling with them. I'm standing near them. I've shuffled over to bask in their feeling of worry and anxiety as I have no allegiance to either side in the game I'm going to watch. I loiter with intent, soaking up the early morning atmosphere.

Thinking about it, it's unfair to give the impression that I'm going to the same game as them. You know I’m not anyway. Their destination is the City of Manchester Stadium and the Conference Play-Off final. I'm headed for the Women's FA Cup final but in the absence of any Arsenal Ladies and Bristol Academy supporters to interact with; they seemed the best bet.

That's right. My eventual destination is the Ricoh Arena in Coventry via the scenic-route-travelling train that takes nearly two hours. The "normal" (read: far too expensive for a man still getting used to the harsh financial reality of living in Putney) route would have got me there in 56 minutes; but not the super off-peak return ticket I’ve picked up. But it's okay. I'm on a mission to discover women's football. A mission that started less than 48 hours prior to the game kicking off; so I don’t mind an extra 44 minutes on the train.

She, my better half, has a habit of travelling for her work. When She is gone, there is no-one around to reign in my careless whims that normally end on a second thought. She is the someone that forces me into a realisation of impracticality and the notion that I may be concocting a plan that will end with me frittering away my pennies. Without that someone to force me into the much needed second thought, I embark on missions.

As such, on Thursday afternoon at 3:36pm I had a spark of brain activity.

By 3:43pm, my train ticket was booked and ticket purchased for the showcase of the women’s domestic game.

By 3:51pm rolled around, I'd also sorted myself a ticket for the Women's Champions League final at Craven Cottage but that will be another story for another day. Maybe tomorrow.

The train split into two at Northampton, with the front four carriages heading for Crewe and the rear carriages taking everyone else to Coventry. Having sat in the fifth carriage I did have a minor panic I was in the wrong place. My mind was swiftly put at ease by a lovely Nigerian woman.

I'd never been to Coventry. Once I had gotten over seeing it for the first time (7 seconds) and used up my string of jokes about seeing potential Arsenal Ladies players Andrea Arshavin, Jackie Wilshere, Nicola Bendtner and Robin van Persie (3 minutes 28 seconds); I educated myself on the two teams.

Hang on; that last name actually works.

For those of you that don't know, Arsenal Ladies are the dominant force of British football; winning basically every title going. Imagine the exact opposite of their men's side. They were in search of their 11th cup triumph in their history. Bristol Academy had reached their first ever FA Cup final, having lost out at the semi-final stage on five previous occasions before this season.

Given that Arsenal Ladies currently sit second in the FA Women's Super League and Bristol are fifth with seven points from seven games, I only expected the match to go one way. As a Manchester United fan and even though we don't have a women's team; a big part of me wanted it to go Bristol's way or at least to penalties.

It didn't.

The play was neat and tidy and the ball control was very good. The Bristol players knew that they job was to try and upset the odds but in Rachel Yankey, Ellen White, Katie Chapman and Julie Fleeting; Arsenal possessed the flair player, the fast-rising superstar, the midfield dynamo and the clinical finisher of the British game.

In Jess Fishlock, Bristol had a hope and a prayer of something happening. Fishlock had scored in every round on their way to the final and was seen as playing a vital role in any success Bristol would enjoy.

Sadly for this neutral, they didn't get that something they needed. They battled hard, defended well and didn't panic. Unfortunately, they didn't trouble Arsenal. The Academy's tactics were clear from the start. They put bodies behind the ball and tried to hit Arsenal on the break. Fishlock was expected to link up with Anne-Marie Heatherson as much as possible. It was on them to conjure up a chance; while Arsenal supposedly toiled in front of the West Country rear-guard action.

The Gunners didn't toil. They exploited their straight-line speed on the wings. Bristol tried to congest the central areas with bodies, so Arsenal simply drew back and put the ball in over the heads of the fullbacks with White and Yankey doing the chasing. An Arsenal with a back-up plan; I couldn't believe my eyes.

But for some fine saves from Siobhan Chamberlain in the Bristol goal, Arsenal would have won the game by more. Of course, if Chamberlain hadn't of made one of her early saves, the game would have infinitely different so who is to say that the score may or may not have been. Oh well; it can't be changed now. It's over. It's finished 2-0.

Kim Little and Julie Fleeting, both Scottish internationals, scored first-half goals that settled the tie. Little, busy through the game at the forward point of the midfield three, cut out a poor clearance, sold a defender a dummy and then sent the 'keeper the wrong way. Fleeting added the second on the half hour, moments after Chamberlain had kept matters competitive. She tipped a free-kick onto the bar and then made a point-blank stop from a volley before the number 10 nodded Little's cross past her before she could react.

If some life was sapped from the Bristol players thanks to Fleeting's fine finish, it was completely gone when Fishlock failed to return for the second half. She was Bristol's most promising hope of a comeback into the game but went down in the 41st minute after an aerial class with Jordan Nobbs. Four minutes of treatment and the half-time break wasn't enough for her to return. Without their talisman... taliswoman... talisperson? Without their leading star and her streak of dazzling white hair, the belief amongst the Bristol players appeared gone.

Her replacement, Lillie Billson tried valiantly to link-up with Heatherson as much as she could but she lacked the ability of Fishlock to take players on; and on numerous occasions she didn't get the chance. Instead of trying to build an attack, the Bristol defence resorted to clearing the ball into Arsenal's half where none of their players were. Laura Harvey's side were allowed to build attacks steadily from the back without the pressure and harrying that had been ever-present in the first 45 minutes.

It was all far too comfortable for Arsenal so much so that I went for a wander at the beginning of the second half. I did so that I’d be in a better position for the eventual trophy presentation on the other side of the pitch. I did so, safe in the knowledge that Arsenal were unlikely to lose possession while I was gone. They didn’t. I kept tabs on them via the scenes in the concourse showing Sky’s live coverage of the game.

In the end, it was nothing like the 2-2 draw the two teams had played out just eight days before this clash (if the highlights on the FAWSL are anything to go by). Still, it was well-worth the £5 entry; even if sodding Arsenal won.

Now, Danny mentioned something about travel expenses.

Ryan is the Editor of The First Eleven

You can follow Ryan, The First Eleven and European Football Weekends on Twitter

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