Ends in defeat
dribbed through a sea of Scotland players and picked out the perfect cutback to Barnes, who was unable to beat the Celtic keeper, who is on loan at Ayr United.
Scotland were delaying the inevitable against the team who finished top of the qualifying group and the opening goal finally came in the 60th minute when Mccrorie fouled Dowell and Reiss Nelson pinged the dead ball into the top corner from 25 yards.
It was more of the same but with six minutes remaining Scotland did force an intervention by Henderson, who had to stop a Morgan angled effort.
England had the last word when Everton’s Dowell cut inside and scorched a left-foot effort into the net with virtually the last kick.
Glasgow City will be hoping to contain Barcelona and keep their Women’s Champions League ambitions alive for the second leg in Scotland when they play the Catalan giants at the Mini Estadi tonight.
The last-16 tie looks to be a massive ask for a City side who have fought through a qualifying group and the last 32. Barcelona are fully professional, with internationalists from France, Netherlands and England, as well as Spain, in their squad.
By contrast nearly all the City players have day jobs or are in education – including 16-yearold central defender Carly Girasoli, who is likely to start. The players trained yesterday evening at the Mini Estadi, in the shadow of Camp Nou, only hours after arriving in Barcelona following a morning flight from Glasgow.
“We would have preferred to go over on the Monday,” head coach Scott Booth admitted, but the club were thwarted by the October holiday. Another factor in the home side’s favour is that they were able to rest several players and still stroll to a 9-1 win over Rayo Vallecano in a league game on Sunday, while City lost 2-1 to Hibernian in a stamina-sapping SSE Scottish Women’s Cup semi-final.
Captain Leanne Ross and striker Kirsty Howat received knocks in that game but are available tonight.
Booth is likely to set up his side in a similar fashion to the away leg of the last-32 tie against Somatio Barcelona, which resulted in a 2-0 win for the Scottish champions in Limassol.
“I’ve found out in football that it’s hard to do repeat jobs, but it’s what we have to try to do against Barcelona,” the former Aberdeen and Scotland striker pointed out. “In Cyprus we played in a certain way because of the heat and size of the pitch.
“The girls did it so well and we’ll have to try to do the same job against Barca.”
The glimmer of hope for Booth and his players is that the Catalans only squeezed past Biik-kazygurt 4-3 on aggregate in the previous round, having lost the first leg in Kazakhstan 3-1.
City were beaten 4-4 on away goals to the same side in the 2017-18 competition, but would have gone through had Ross not hit the post with a penalty late in the second leg at Petershill Park.
Nevertheless, Barcelona put out a weakened side in the first Kazygurt game and were made to pay the price. Neither Lieke Martens, who was player of the tournament when the Netherlands won Euro 2017, nor England striker Toni Duggan played in that game – just as they didn’t in Sunday’s rout of Rayo Vallecano.
“Barca have similar strengths to Somatio, but they have them at a different level,” Booth pointed out. “They try to get the ball wide left to Martens as often as they can, while Duggan is a big threat and clever with the ball at her feet.”
The difference is Barca have Vicky Losada and Kheira Hamraoui in midfield. They are two really classy players. Patricia Guijarro plays at the top of the midfield and is the most attacking-minded.
“When you go to Spain, and Barcelona in particular, you’re going to a club that are the best in the world at keeping the ball,” the head coach said.