The fun brake wore black trousers, an elegant sweater and an inconspicuous VfL Wolfsburg crest on the chest. Tommy Stroot’s players were celebrating their semi-final success in the soccer Champions League around him.
They had defeated Arsenal just before the end of extra time and in that 119th minute shocked more than 60,000 spectators at London’s Emirates Stadium. The atmosphere was so exuberant that Lena Oberdorf from Wolfsburg grabbed a microphone and did the interview with her teammate Jule Brand herself.
But then coach Stroot stepped in front of the camera and said a few not insignificant sentences. “I’m not done yet,” said the VfL coach. “We have a final to play. Of course it’s a great highlight to reach this final. But we know that there’s still a step to take.”
“Barcelona is a bomb opponent”
This last step is the final against FC Barcelona on June 3rd in Eindhoven. Against FC Barcelona, ??who defeated the women of Wolfsburg 5-1 in the semifinals last year in front of 91,000 spectators.
“Barcelona are a bomb opponents. It doesn’t really get any bigger than that,” said Pauline Bremer, who scored the decisive goal on Monday evening in the 3-2 (2-2, 1-1) in London after a preliminary work by Brand. Exactly this final “was our goal, we made that very clear before the season and we kept pushing it before this game too. We want to go to this stadium, we want to go to Eindhoven – and now the time has come!”
For by far the most successful German women’s team in the past ten years, it is the sixth final appearance in the Champions League. They won the cup in 2013 and 2014. In 2016, 2018 and 2020 they lost to record winners Olympique Lyon.
Wolfsburg won the Champions League in 2013
But the backdrop at the Emirates Stadium alone shows, like the one at Barcelona’s Camp Nou a year ago, that the Wolfsburg women practically won a different competition ten years ago. That was before world clubs like Barcelona, ??Chelsea or Arsenal pumped a lot of money and know-how into the Champions League. That was before women’s football even filled the largest stadiums in Europe and the premier class was massively upgraded in 2021 with group and knockout phases.
When VfL won the Champions League for the first time in 2013, it flew to London for the final. But at the time of the 1-0 win against Lyon, the arena of Arsenal rivals Chelsea FC was not even half full with 19,278 spectators.
The fact that the German champions made it into the final again under the new conditions was “not a matter of course,” said Stroot. The VfL and national team captain Alexandra Popp knows that too. After all, she was the only player in the current Wolfsburg squad in 2013 and 2014.
“I have almost no strength left to celebrate,” said the 32-year-old after the comeback, goal and success in London. “The game was brutally exhausting and brutally hard. But I’m super happy.” Popp believes in the triple of DFB Cup, championship and Champions League this season. In any case, she said about the final against Barcelona: “In the last few years, when we were often in the final, something was always missing. I think it’s our turn this year. The nice thing is: I think we have our whole Quality hasn’t been played out yet. That can happen in the Champions League final.”
