Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor has urged Chelsea to “go for it” against Barcelona in the second leg of the Champions League semifinal with captain Millie Bright adding that the team have “nothing to lose.”
The west London side’s 4-1 defeat in the first leg has left them with an an uphill task to overturn their three-goal deficit and book their place in the final in Lisbon.
“We need to score so we’ll go for it,” Bompastor told a news conference on Saturday. “This is part of the club DNA but also our mentality. We’ll be playing a home game and we’ll try out best to try and be in the position to score goals but we know it will be really important not to concede. That’s the big challenge but we are ready for that.”
Barça have not lost a game by three goals since the 2019 final, when Lyon defeated them 4-1. In fact, since the competition was reformed as the Champions League in 2009, no team has overturned a three-goal deficit to progress on aggregate.
The last time Barça lost a game by 4-0 was back in 2012 against Arsenal with a then 18-year-old Alexia Putellas featuring for the Catalan side.
In recent years, Barça have been a thorn in Chelsea’s side, defeating them at this stage of the competition in the past two seasons.
Bompastor is no stranger to the European giants either, having faced them in the final last season with Lyon — who hold a 2-1 lead over Arsenal in the other semifinal — where they fell to a 2-0 loss in Bilbao.
“We have to take risks to be able to score,” Bompastor said. “It’s about having the right mentality going into that game. I know with my squad I have a lot of talent and quality, the players who will start the game will have to show that talent tomorrow in the game.”
Chelsea started the afternoon positively, with Hannah Hampton saving a penalty in the 10th minute, but struggled against a ruthless Barça side looking to win a third consecutive European title. They managed to claw their way back through Sandy Baltimore after conceding a second, but capitulated in the final 20 minutes to leak two more goals.
“Probably when we were 2-1, that result was not too bad for us, we just conceded two goals we could avoid in the last 10 minutes of the game. I think we need to keep our focus from the beginning until the end and work really hard to make it hard for Barcelona,” Bompastor said.
When asked what they need to do better in the second leg, Chelsea captain Bright joked: “Defend better than what we did in the first game.
“You’ve got nothing to lose going into this game, going out there, leaving absolutely everything out there on that pitch and giving it our all, that’s what we’re going to do,” she added.
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