This season’s Champions League group stages will begin on Tuesday night. With it, the ongoing quest for an English team to win the competition for the first time since 2007 will restart, too.
Arsenal’s victory in Europe’s top club competition 17 years ago remains the only English success, and with every passing year the question looms larger: why do English teams struggle against Europe’s elite?
The Women’s Super League prides itself on being one of the foremost leagues in Europe, but the lack of Champions League success takes the shine off its supposed quality. Is that fair? Or is it just really hard to beat Barcelona?
One English team who have been consistently strong in Europe, though unable to win the Champions League, is Chelsea. They have reached at least the semi-final stage in five of the past seven years. On the last two of those occasions they lost against Barcelona, and they also lost to the Catalans in the 2021 final.
During that time, only Lyon have successfully stopped Barcelona winning the competition, beating them 3-1 in 2022 under current Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor.
In both semi-finals, where were in 2022-23 and 2023-24, Chelsea lost 2-1 on aggregate, suggesting that the big gap in quality that was obvious in the 4-0 final loss in Gothenburg had…
