VfL Wolfsburg Women take on defending champions FC Barcelona in the first leg of their UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final on Friday evening (kick-off 18:45 CEST). In the build-up to the match, where a crowd of over 90,000 is expected in attendance, head coach Tommy Stroot discussed…
…the influence of the crowd: “We’ve already played in stadiums with a certain flair in the past, such as in Turin or at Chelsea. We enjoy every moment of the Champions League, and the atmosphere tomorrow will once again underline just how special it is. We’re all looking forward to it.”
…team news: “We’ve known for a while that Lena Oberdorf will miss both games. She’ll be replaced by Alexandra Popp, but I’m not going to say in which position. With our goalkeepers, we made a last-minute decision not to include Katarzyna Kiedrzynek in the squad unfortunately. That leaves us with two talented youngsters in Julia Kassen and Melanie Wagner behind Almuth Schult. Pia-Sophie Wolter is also absent, but everyone else is available.”
…the opposition: “Barca typically play a possession-based game. Up top they’re dangerous in front of goal thanks to a variety of players, which is what sets them apart and puts them on a different level. We’re going up against the best club team by far at the moment, so Barcelona are the clear favourites going into both games. Having said that, recently we’ve shown what we can do and what we’re capable of on several occasions. Nobody thought we’d beat Chelsea 4-0, or get past Arsenal in the way we did, or that we’d get the results we’ve had against Bayern. We want to perform in the way we did in those games.”
…the objective for the first leg: “It’s our job to focus on our qualities. We know we’re stable at the back. We don’t want to hide; we want to show what we can do. We need to show our true colours. If we do that we know we’ll always get chances to score.”
