Wolfsburg run riot to dump Chelsea out of Women’s Champions League
For Chelsea, the champions of England, this was one of those nights that feels cold and alien. Occasionally they turn up and for whatever reason, they are off the boil. Occasionally they are even beaten. Barcelona in last season’s Champions League final was a special trouncing by a special team. But rarely have they been dismantled like this, humiliated like this. Wolfsburg scored four and frankly they probably left a few more out there. Chelsea are out of this season’s Champions League, and where they go from here is anyone’s guess.
Needing either a draw or a narrow defeat to progress, Chelsea could muster only a fiesta of positional indiscipline, aimless crosses and a general sense of tameness. By the end Emma Hayes was wearing a haunted, vaguely puzzled expression. This is, after all, the same team that had lifted the FA Cup less than a fortnight earlier, who looked poised to take the next step.
Afterwards, Hayes said that Covid anxiety had been a factor in her side’s poor performance, after two players – goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger and midfielder Drew Spence – tested positive before the game. “I’ve got players being sick in there, they’re exhausted and maybe some of that mental anxiety plays a part,” Hayes said. “I didn’t recognise my players tonight.”
Chelsea may not yet have a crisis on their hands, but given the speed of their disintegration it certainly feels like one. Two goals from Svenja Huth in the first half and two from Tabea Wassmuth in the second barely hinted at Wolfsburg’s dominance here: in every area of the pitch they were not just superior but embarrassingly, unnervingly superior.
Ironically, one of the main criticisms of Huth over the course of her career is that for an attacker of her vision and talent she should probably score more goals than she does. Remarkably enough this was her 33rd Champions League game, and yet in the space of seven minutes she managed to double her career goal tally in the competition while also putting last year’s finalists on the brink of elimination.
Both goals came from close range: the first after Shanice van de Sanden’s shot was parried back into trouble by Zecira Musovic, the second as Jess Carter was unable to prevent Wassmuth’s cross from the left byline. With 23 minutes played, Chelsea were theoretically out. And for all Wolfsburg’s crisp passing and shrewd movement, they had been largely complicit in their own downfall: uneven, unconnected and curiously error-prone, in much the same way as in their shock 1-0 defeat to Reading at the weekend.
Chelsea started here with an aggressive high press, and while it occasionally allowed them to carve out openings, for the most part Wolfsburg were able to make them turn and run into the gargantuan spaces they left behind. Lena Oberdorf, the teenage genius, was running the game in midfield. Jill Roord was gamely running the channels. In total Wolfsburg completed 203 passes in the first half to Chelsea’s 76.
And for all Chelsea’s occasional flourishes – Sam Kerr hitting the crossbar with a dipping shot from a tight angle, Pernille Harder missing a free header from six yards – with six minutes left in the half Hayes had seen enough. Ji So-yun replaced the distraught-looking Sophie Ingle and within seconds she almost halved the deficit, smashing the ball straight at Almuth Schult from close range.
Ji’s introduction offered Chelsea greater composure with the ball, but did little to address their lack of cohesion without it. Wolfsburg were still finding it too easy to attack the spaces behind Chelsea’s wing-backs, and after a spell of Chelsea pressure at the start of the second half Wolfsburg hit them again. On the hour Huth made the run out of midfield, latching on to Pauline Bremer’s flick-on from a goal kick. Huth found Wassmuth, Wassmuth poked the ball home: a route one goal that seemed to encapsulate the dysfunction at the heart of the Chelsea defence.
Needing two goals in the last 15 minutes, Hayes threw caution to the wind, bringing off the wretched Carter and the quiet Fran Kirby. But pushing forward only further exposed the fissures at the back, and with 12 minutes remaining Wassmuth again burst clear in the right channel and emphatically smashed the ball in at the near post. To underline Chelsea’s chagrin,