“Fiery summit” between Barcelona and Arsenal in the Women’s Champions League

Two of the biggest teams in the Women's Champions League will meet on Thursday, as Spanish champion Barcelona hosts English team Arsenal, knowing that the two clubs have won the past four editions of the tournament.

Barcelona, who also won the title in 2021, won the Champions League in three of the past four seasons, but this series was interrupted by Arsenal, which beat the brilliant Spanish team to win the tournament in the 2025 final.

Barcelona currently leads the league table, and is the only team with a perfect record and full marks.

For its part, Arsenal made a mixed start, as it narrowly won 1-0 over Denmark's HP Kogi, which Barcelona had crushed by 8-0, and tied with France's Paris FC 2-2 before defeating Portuguese Benfica 3-0.

While Barcelona has the largest number of points in the league stage of the tournament, and Arsenal is two points behind it, behind them are Olympique Lyonnais of France, last season’s runner-up, and Chelsea of ​​England.

France's Lyon also has a prolific goalscoring record, and has one of the strongest defense lines. It wasted only two points in a goalless draw with England's Chelsea, and crushed Switzerland's Servette Geneva 8-0, and achieved another great result at the expense of Italy's Inter Milan with a clean six-point win.

Lyon will face another Italian team, Juventus, on Wednesday, while Chelsea, which also did not concede a goal, will visit Swedish team Hacken the day before that.

Manchester City had a mixed start after returning to the tournament, as they tied all three of their matches, and they will be keen to achieve their first victory when they visit Inter Milan on Tuesday.

City, who reached the quarter-finals two seasons ago, did not qualify for the league stage of the Champions League last year, but came back after their first year under coach Andre Geiglertz, who helped the team end Chelsea's dominance of the Women's Super League, winning their first league title in a decade.

In another match, Bayern Munich, one of last year's semi-finalists, will host Paris Saint-Germain of France, and both teams have 5 points, 4 points behind Barcelona.

The league stage, in its second year, includes 18 teams competing in 6 rounds, with the top four teams qualifying directly to the quarter-finals, and the clubs that finish between fifth and twelfth places will compete in play-off matches in the knockout stage next February.

The final match will be held at Poland's National Stadium in Warsaw, late May next year.

The Dutch Football Association announced, on Monday, that captain Virgil van Dijk and striker Brian Proby have left the national team squad, which is preparing to play the final two matches in the group stage of the European Nations League, in the middle of this month.

Van Dijk participated in Liverpool's 3-1 victory over its host Crystal Palace on Sunday, maintaining his perfect record by playing every minute of the English Premier League matches this season, but the Dutch Federation said that he was not fit to participate.

Van Dijk's previous international match, which ended in a 2-1 victory over Serbia in October, was the defender's 100th international match.

As for striker Brobbie, he participated in his team Sunderland’s 1-0 victory over Chelsea on Sunday, but the Dutch Federation said that he is not ready either.

Probbe started in the 1-1 draw against Germany at the start of the Nations League campaign in September, but was forced to leave the field due to injury after just over half an hour of play, and missed the following matches, against Serbia twice and Greece.

The team did not call up any substitute for the duo, as the Netherlands squad included 23 players.

The Netherlands will host its rival, Greece, in Group A in Amsterdam, on Friday, before hosting Germany in Berlin, on Monday.