Harder hits four as Wolfsburg crush Glasgow City part-timers

No one could pretend to be surprised by the ease with which Wolfsburg picked apart a Glasgow City side still comprising a number of part-time players and, in many ways, this went exactly as scripted as they won 9-1 yesterday.

If anyone was going to score four goals in one match at this stage of the competition, it would be Pernille Harder: here, her first arrived after 15 minutes and her last after 71. It began with a give-and-go that undid the Glasgow defence and saw her slot home and ended in what was Wolfsburg’s fourth, with her planting a fearsome whip of a half-volley into the top corner. Between those, Ingrid Syrstad Engen scored twice, before Harder earned her hat-trick by nodding home from a Svenja Huth cross. City never got a handle on Huth and her deliveries undid them time after time.

The most stylish finish of the evening arrived from City’s Lauren Wade, who latched on to a flick-on from goalkeeper Lee Alexander’s looping goal-kick to outmanoeuvre two neon-green shirts and flick a delightful first-time finish into the far corner. However, Felicitas Rauch swept home Wolfsburg’s sixth and Harder headed home the seventh, and own goals from Leanne Ross and Jenna Clarke took the German side to nine.

“Genuinely, the players worked incredibly hard,” said the Glasgow City manager Scott Booth. “You have to give credit to the opposition. They are an incredible team.”

Things were far closer in Bilbao, where much-fancied Barcelona had to wait until the 80th minute to break down an obdurate and stubborn Atletico Madrid side, with the only goal of the match.

Atletico arrived severely weakened and depleted: five positive coronavirus tests meant they were able to name just six substitutes compared to Barcelona’s 12, and the training ground had to be shut down for the past 10 days.

Forced into quarantine, players had not trained for over a week.

Their team-mate Virginia Torrecilla, who was watching from her home as she recovers from an operation on a brain tumour, was very much at the forefront of their minds, and they wore red shirts before kick-off in tribute to her.

They defended staunchly – goalkeeper Hedvig Lindahl and Aissatou Tounkara deserve enormous credit for their efforts to retain parity – and managed to stifle Barcelona’s key creators in Caroline Graham Hansen and Lieke Martens.

Asisat Oshoala came to embody Barcelona’s lack of composure as the game wore on, launching into a miscued bicycle kick in an effort to meet Graham Hansen’s late delivery, but Kheira Hamraoui was on hand to tuck the ball past Lindahl as the game inched towards its close.