As we gear up for another edition of the Women's Champions League, the excitement around this iconic club competition is as tantalising as ever. (More Football News)
This season's tourna♌ment, which starts on Tuesday, brings with it new managers and big moves from some top players, as the best and brightest across women's European football go toe-to-toe.
Sixteen teams have q🀅ualified and will now bat🥃tle it out to be crowned champions of Europe in Lisbon next year.
The tournament will welcome Celtic and Galatasaray, who have become the first teams from Sco💧tland and Turkiye, respectively, to reach the group stage in this current format.
There are also de🌺butants in the form of Swedish side Hammarby, who turned heads in the qualifying rounds by knocking out last season's quarter-finalists Benfica.
After trai♏ling in the first leg, Hammarby managed to claim a historic victory. No team had ever previously overturned a first-leg deficit in a Women's Champions League qualifier.
Barcelona are the reigning champions 🧸after they beat Lyon in the final back in May.
The growth and strength of the Women's Super League has been reflected in this year's final ﷺ16. With Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City all qualifying, England are now only the third nation to have three teams reach the group stage of the competition, with Germany and France having done so previously.
Europe's best are ready to battle it out, but who are the contenders, and which players could light up the 2024-2ꦅ5 edition?
The main contenders
Holders Barcelona will have a fight on th♔eir hands to retain their trophy this season, but they also have a strong chance of making more history themselves.
Barca are striving to become only the second club to win a third consecutive Champions League, and they will also bid to equal Lyon's record of appearing in five straight finals, with 🥂the French side having achieved the feat between 2016 and 2020.
Barca grew intꩵo a dominant force under former boss Jonatan📖 Giraldez, who is now coaching Washington Spirit.
Former assistant coach to Giraldez, Pere Romeu, will have to see if he can continue the club's quest f🤡or trophies, but the bar has been set high by that quadruple last season.
Teams will be looking for the chink in the Catalans' armour. Defensively, Barca were generally excellent✨ last season, though th🍃ey did have a slight defensive underperformance, conceding 1.6 goals more than would have been anticipated based on their expected goals against (xGA) figures in the Champions League, albeit when discounting own goals, that underperformance dropped to 0.6.
They also had the meanest defence in the competition when 🍃it came to clean sheets, keeping six to help them win nine games.
The best sides in front of goal last season were, unsurprisingly, the two teams that reac🐬hed the final – Barca and Lyon. They netted 36 times each across 11 games apiece.
Lyon, although under new leadership, are the most successful side in the history of the competition, winning eight titles, and they are difficult to look p𒈔ast as the team to be💙at.
Their free-shooting, free-flowing attacking system under former coach Sonia Bompastor saw them produce a whopping 270 attempts on goal last term, an average of 24.5 per game. Barca (237) were second for shots, and shot conversion rat✱e (15.19%), meanwhile.
Lyon's xG was a tournament-🐓leading 35.4, while Barca's 29.11 ranked second – however, Barca greatly overperformed their xG.
Indeed, their 6.89 xG overperformance was the highest🍰 positive differential in last season's competition, proving their finishing was of an exceptionally high standard.
It will not all be about Barca and Lyon, though. Two other former continental champions, Arsenal and Wolfsburg♊, are sides who will see themselves as ready to dethrone Barca and taste E🦄uropean glory once more.
Wolfsburg are six-time finalists and two-time champions, so they should never be discounted. Nor should Bayern Munich, who have 🅠won the Frauen-Bundesliga title in the last two seasons.
Bayern went out in t🥀he group stage last season, only winning one of their six games, but they should fare better this time around.
And while they are yet to go all the way in Europe, C💝helsea and Manchester City could also be forces to be reckone🦂d with.
English trio to challenge
Bompastor led Lyon ꦍto victory as their captain in 2011 and 2012 and as their head coach in 2021, an incredible feat that nไobody else has achieved in the tournament's history.
She now finds herself in charge of English Champi🎃ons Chelsea and will be keen to lead her new side to their first Champions League title🦄.
Chelsea, who reached the semi-finals, had the best shot conve💦rsion rate (15.38%) in the 2023-24 tournament, scoring 20 goals from 130 shots.
Bompastor will hope to build on her own success and knowledge of the competition and becom♛e the first manager to lead an English side to European success since Arsenal's victory in the 2006-07 season.
Despite winning everything there is to win domestically under previous boss Emma Hayes, this is a trophy that has evaded the Blues and they are desperate for success. They lost 4-0 in a humiliating fi♉nal outing versus Barcelona in 2020-21.
Serial winner Lucy Bronze has been brought into the Chelsea fold by Bompastor, and a huge factor in that transfer was her experience of Champions ♔League success. The ambitious defender wil🧸l aim to become only the second player, after Conny Pohlers, to win the competition with three different sides, previously lifting the trophy with Lyon and Barcelona.
City, meanwhile, ar💦e appearing in the gr♈oup stages for the first time since the competition's format was changed in 2021 and Gareth Taylor and his team will be keen to show Europe's best why they have pushed Chelsea all the way in the WSL in recent seasons.
Last season's star players
Kadidiatou Diani w💎as the leading scorer in last season's Champions League, netting eight goals, and sheౠ will be as dangerous as ever in Lyon's attacking line.
Those goals came from 4.77 xG — that 3.23 overperformance was higher than any other player in the competition. S🍃he was not only the highest go♕alscorer, but her finishes were a level above what would have been anticipated based on the quality of chances she had.
Ada Hegerberg is the all-time leading scorer in the competition with 64 goals. However, she🐈 underperformed her tournament-leading 7.33 xG by 2.33 last ca🍌mpaign, so there's scope for improvement for the 29-year-old.
Despite the xG underperformance, she still tallied up an impressi𒁏ve five goals to finish tied for fifth in the charts, along with Caroline ﷽Hansen, Tabitha Chawinga, Marie-Yasmine Alidou and Sam Kerr.
Lyon's Selma Bacha created the mos🃏t chances in last season's competition (35), registering 4.12 expected assists (xA), though she only provided two assists in total.
Barcelona's Hansen (33) was second-highest for chances created, but led the way for xA (4.66) and assists (five), level with her team-mate Aitana Bonmati and ♔just ahead of Bronze and Roma playmaker Manuela Giugliano (both 🅘four).
Between the💮 sticks, St. Polten's Carina Schluter was the busiest goalkeeper, making 43 saves, though Chelsea's Zecira Musovic boasted the best save percentage (81.82%) of any shot-stopper to play at least 90 min😼utes.
Jennifer Falk, of BK Hacken, was the best-performing goalkeeper when it came to ෴goals prevented, however, conceding 10, which is 3.85 fewer than would have been anticipated based on the quality of shots she faced, according to Opta's expected goals on target (xGoT) model.
The groups
Four groups of four teams will battle it out to reach the knockout stag🐎es. There are some top ties to look forward to before we get to the last eight, and undoubted꧙ly there will be some surprises along the way.
Group A boasts two former champions with 10 titles between them in Lyon and Wolfsburg. The two sidඣes ༺have met in finals of the tournament on four occasions, with Lyon victorious in three of those instances.
But Wolfsburg, who thrashed Fiorentina in qualifying, have lost some huge names over the summer. Germany midfielder Lena Oberdorf, Poland forward Ewa Pajor and N💜etherlands defender Dominique Janssen all exited ahead of the new campaign.
Pajor has made a fantastic start to life at Barcelona, scoring six goals already, and generating the highe💞st xG of any p🍰layer in the top five leagues so far in 2024-25 (6.56).
Roma will join the two giants from Germany and France. Their best finish💜 in the tournamen꧙t saw them progress to the last eight on their competition debut in 2022-23.
The group's final side, Galatasaray, battled hard through the qualifying rounds and stamped their mark on the competition by knocking out three-time quarter-fin⛎alists Slavia to become the first Turkish team to reach the group stage.
Group B has served up a familiar matchup with Chelsea and Real Madrid be♏ing drawn ꦰtogether for a third consecutive year.
Dutch Champions Twente will bring an attacking brand of football to the tournament and should not be underestimated.🌌 They sco💟red 20 goals to qualify for the group stages. Debutants Celtic, meanwhile, will also look to make their mark.
Group C could be considered the group of death, with former champions Arsenal, Bayern and surprise package Juventus, who👍 caused the biggest upset of the qualifying rounds, going head-to-head.
The Bianconere beca🅘me the first team to knock out Paris Saint-Germain before the quarter-finals since Tyr൲eso in 2013-14, ending the dreams of English number one Mary Earps after her big move from Manchester United.
Group D will host the most exciting fixture of the group stage🔯s as holders Barca take on Man City in the opening game. The teams have met previously in a quarter-🎀final in 2020-21, with Barca going on to win the tournament that year.
St. Polten have qualified for the fourth time in five seasons, and Hammarby have shown they are not scared of the 𝓀bigger sides by knocking out one of last year's quarter-finalists Benfica in the qualifying rounds.
The tournament promises to be 🍬exciting, with some intriguing storylines to follow from top to bottom.
Will Barcelona win a third stra🗹ight crown, can Lyon extend their record number of titles, or is it time for an English champion for the first time since 2007? We can't wait to f🔯ind out.
