1 question for every UEFA women's Champions League quarterfinalist

This is the once weekly free edition of Hi It's Kim. If you'd like daily content and the ability to suggest topics, you can subscribe to my Patreon. If you'd like to support me but can't commit to a recurring payment, you can buy me a coffee.

If you got here via the web or a friend forwarding the email, you can get these posts sent to your inbox by subscribing here.

Women’s football gets better every year all around the world, but there’s nothing that comes close to replicating the quality of UEFA women’s Champions League knockout stage matches. Everyone left at the quarterfinal stage is capable of beating every other team, and had to get results against some of the world’s best to make it this far.

I’d consider Barcelona to be a slight favorite to win the competition, but I think the difference between 1st and 8th is the tightest it’s ever been. There’s something great and some flaw in every team. So I thought I’d look at one question I have about everyone.

Bayern Munich: Can they win the ball off Little and Wälti?

In an interview with Jonathan Liew at The Guardian, Bayern Munich midfielder Georgia Stanway said “we need to be nastier, I tell the girls that a lot.” This is going to be especially applicable to a matchup against Arsenal, whose deep-lying midfielders Lia Wälti and Kim Little are especially talented at ball retention. They’re at 89th and 92nd percentile respectively for pass completion percentage in FA WSL according to FBRef, which uses Opta data, and are not prone to getting knocked off the ball.

Bayern are great at a lot of things, but I’m not sure that winning the ball high up the pitch off deeper midfielders is one of them. Likely attacking midfield starter Sydney Lohmann is probably a roughly middle of the road presser and defensive presence among No. 10s, averaging about 2 tackles + interceptions per 90 in the Bundesliga. Stanway, who plays a bit deeper, is slightly more active with 3.

But the gap in quality between Bayern and most of their domestic opponents is large, so Lohmann and Stanway simply aren’t required to do a lot of ball-winning, because they have the ball all the time. It’ll be interesting to see if they’re up to the task in a more even matchup, against two players whose premier quality is that they never give the ball way cheaply.

Arsenal: Can their fullbacks hold up 1v1?

Arsenal boss Jonas Eidevall is yet to find his ideal fullback pairing. Through some combination of injuries and poor performances, players have cycled in and out of the roles, with some playing both sides. Poor defensive play from fullbacks has cost Arsenal a few results this season, with this goal by Manchester City probably the most prominent example.

They’ll have their hands full with German national team stars Lina Magull and Klara Bühl on either side of the Bayern attack. There’s a case to be made for any two of Steph Catley, Katie McCabe, Noelle Maritz and Laura Wienroither to start for Arsenal, and getting that selection right could be make or break.

AS Roma: Stick to your guns, or go defensive?

In a mailbag article for paid subscribers (you can get those here!), a reader asked what’s made Roma successful. The short answer is that they’re really good at winning the ball high up the pitch and turning those defensive actions into shots, or dribbles that lead to shots. They don’t have a lot of high xA passes, and they don’t win the ball back in deeper areas as much as their Serie A contemporaries with similar possession numbers. Basically, they play ice hockey.

But will they even try to replicate the tactics that have brought them so much Serie A and early Champions League success when they face a behemoth in Barcelona? Sophie Lawson had a great piece at ESPN, in which manager Alessandro Spugna implies that his team will have to be a bit more balanced than usual, but will not abandon its philosophy against Barca:

Sticking to an aggressive, high pressing game against Barca feels crazy, but it probably gives Roma the best opportunity to win, even if it introduces scenarios where they could lose heavily and give up some comedy goals. Teaching a team a new style of football in a couple of weeks usually isn’t a good idea, and Barca’s used to having to break down bunkers anyway. I hope we see a brave version of the Giallorosse.

FC Barcelona: Can Oshoala shut up the haters?

Asisat Oshoala has consistently been one of the best strikers in the world since arriving at Barcelona in 2019. She has 84 goals in 93 league games, and scores a goal every 65 minutes that she plays.

Her 1.55 xG per 90 this season is beyond outrageous. She gets into better goal-scoring positions than anyone in the world. And she can also hit long-distance bangers like this.

But unfortunately, Oshoala has also developed a reputation for missing chances in big games. She hasn’t scored in her last 5 Champions League appearances. I think this is mostly just bad luck — a team as good as Barca, relative to its competition, just doesn’t have a large enough sample of “big games” — and I’d love to see her end this narrative once and for all.

She’s as good as anyone else regularly touted as the top striker in the world. It’s about time she made sure this was a universally accepted fact.

Lyon: What do the legends have left? 

Lyon are the defending champions, and the Lyon of the previous decade might still be regarded as the best club team of all time in 50 years. But it’s pretty clear that the legendary pillars of that squad are fading, and the club might be a transfer window or two away from having the ability to regain best in the world status.

Ada Hegerberg is reportedly back in the squad, but it would be unreasonable to expect much from her after such a long layoff. Amandine Henry and Eugenie Le Sommer have been in and out of the team partially due to injuries, but also because they’re probably just not as effective as the younger players in the squad anymore. Wendie Renard and Dzenifer Maroszan are still playing big roles, but it’s clear that while they’re still Champions League knockout caliber players, they are no longer the absolute best in the world at their positions.

I am not here to criticize those players or Lyon for not moving on from them faster. They’ve earned the right to go out on their terms, and they’re still performing admirably given the amount of wear and tear their bodies have taken over their careers. But if Lyon is going to have a chance to repeat, they will need two or three of those players to find a level of performance they haven’t shown since last year’s final.

Chelsea: There has to be more than kick it to Kerr?

Sam Kerr is such an outrageous goal-scorer, with such ridiculous movement and pace, and with the mentality of an effing rabid wolverine, that her teams do not need to be great at attacking. It is a viable strategy in high level games for Chelsea to defend with 10, play long to an isolated Kerr, and expect to score goals.

The Blues scraped a 1-0 win over Manchester United two weeks ago due to Kerr’s brilliance, but just barely. That followed a 3-1 loss to Arsenal in the League Cup final.

Eventually, relying on Kerr to make a big individual play isn’t going to be good enough. Obviously Chelsea can be a more dynamic attacking force than this, but they haven’t been able to figure out how to do it while Pernille Harder and Fran Kirby are on the sidelines injured. Lauren James is quickly emerging as a superstar in her own right, but there’s pretty clearly something missing when it comes to ball progression and central creativity.

So what does Emma Hayes do about it? There are a few solutions. She could accept that the No. 8/wingback experiment with Erin Cuthbert hasn’t gone well and move her higher up the pitch. She could get Jelena Čanković’s guaranteed playmaking ability into the game, sacrificing some defense. She could go to a 3-5-2 and play a defensive, counter-attacking style, but with Kerr and James partnered up top.

Or Kerr could keep winning games by herself.

PSG: Are the center backs good enough?

Paulina Dudek is one of the best central defenders in the world, and her preferred partner Amanda Ilestedt is an excellent player too. Their injuries could be what ends up costing PSG a shot at trophies this year. Les Parisiennes have been cycling players around trying to find the right partnership, to reasonable results, but against lower level opposition than they’ll be facing in Wolfsburg.

Marina Georgieva has made just three league appearances, Allyson Swaby hasn’t featured yet since joining on loan from Angel City, and box-to-box midfield dynamo Grace Geyoro has been putting in shifts at CB recently. I don’t know who’s going to start on Wednesday, and I’m not confident that whoever does can keep the German champions from scoring.

VfL Wolfsburg: Will Lena Oberdorf’s absence hurt?

Germany fans will have breathed a huge sigh of relief this week after seeing that Lena Oberdorf’s scary-looking knee injury wasn’t too serious. She’ll be back in a couple weeks, but she’s not expected to be able to dress for the first leg against PSG.

She has some capable deputies, with Lena Lattwein and Alexandra Popp likely to make up Wolfsburg’s double pivot in her absence, but Die Wölfe are losing a lot of defensive ability and physicality in midfield.

Popp, a former striker, has done very well to use her physical stature to transition into an effective central midfielder in her late career, ala the legendary Michelle Akers. But her instincts are still very much forward-thinking, which is something she shares in common with Lattwein, who is very much an attack-minded 8. Lattwein is in the 93rd percentile in the Bundesliga for xG + xA per 90 minutes, but below 50th percentile in tackles, and she averages less than one interception per 90.

PSG has a stable of attacking midfielders who I’d call inconsistent, but capable of the spectacular. Ramona Bachmann, Laurina Fazer, and Korin Albert are among the world’s best YouTube highlights players, but they also routinely disappear from games (Bachmann has always been like this; Fazer and Albert are teenagers and will get better). Here, enjoy some:

It’s very possible that PSG just don’t get any production out of this group, and Wolfsburg’s midfield gets the job done. But it’s also possible that one of them gets on an absolute heater, and if they do, Oberdorf won’t be there to stop them.

UEFA women’s Champions League quarterfinals schedule

Bayern Munich vs. Arsenal — Tuesday, 1:45 p.m. ET/6:45 p.m. local

Second leg: March 29

AS Roma vs. FC Barcelona — Tuesday, 4 p,m. ET/9 p.m. local

Second leg: March 29

Olympique Lyonnais vs. Chelsea — Wednesday, 1:45 p.m. ET/6:45 p.m. local

Second leg: March 30

Paris Saint-Germain vs. VfL Wolfsburg — Wednesday, 4 p,m. ET/9 p.m. local

Second leg: March 30

In most of the world, every game will be available for free on YouTube. If you’re blacked out in your country, check local listings, or use a VPN. Reminder that time zone differences are a bit wonky right now with America changing clocks before Europe. The time zone differences will be back to normal for the second legs. Double check start times!