Emma Hayes’ post-match press conference was one of mixed emotions, her face a mask of the steely, tight-lipped caution that often characterises the way she talks about these kinds of games.
There was none of the bonhomie that can pepper a Hayes press conference when the Chelsea manager is on form. The message here was “We’re in the tie”, repeated like a catchphrase from a manager who regularly warns that teams cannot win a Champions League tie in the first leg but can easily make the kind of mistakes to lose one.
To go to the return leg with a semblance of hope intact was all Hayes had wanted against a Barcelona side with a goal difference of +100 in the league and who won this last meeting with four first-half goals. That was Chelsea’s first — and to date only — Champions League final.
Chelsea have that hope, albeit slimly, given they will now have to go to the Camp Nou, a stadium at which Barcelona Women have never lost and never scored fewer than three goals.
Perhaps that was why Hayes seemed to admit here to a handful of small regrets; the kind of sliding doors moments on which Champions League semi-finals can spin.
What if Chelsea had started more aggressively, and been first to the pass from which Caroline Graham Hansen sent the ball looping inexorably beyond…
