Barça shines in the Champions League with a 0-6 win in Rome in its second Champions League game. After the losses that marked the first weeks of the season, the Blaugranas left an image of superiority throughout the game: they had more possession of the ball, generated more chances and found solutions both from the team and from individual talent. Claudia Pina and Graham Hansen, with two goals each, set the pace of the match at the Stadio Tre Fontane. The victory also comes in the run-up to the Clásico against Real Madrid next Sunday, October 4.
Barça faces this Champions League with the pressure of defending the title won last season. Pere Romeu had warned before the match that Roma would present difficulties, and for a few minutes the Italians proved him right. They came out with pressure, looked for the back of the Barça defense and made it difficult for the ball to get out. But the resistance lasted until Graham Hansen appeared.
The Norwegian, the best of the match, opened the scoring in the 18th minute with an individual action on the right, cutting back rivals until entering the area and defining. From there, Barça dominated the Italians. Pina gained prominence and found spaces to connect with Pajor, Brugts and the arrivals of Schertenleib, while Hansen continued to be the most unbalancing player in the attack. The second came before the break, in the 38th minute, after a combination between Pina and the Norwegian that ended with Oladipo deflecting the ball into his own goal. The second half ended up breaking the game. Barça returned from the locker room with the same intensity and Pina continued appearing inside alongside Hansen, in a connection that worked very well. Roma was losing strength and leaving more and more spaces, while the Catalans played almost all the time in the opposite field.
With the match already under control, Aitana Bonmatí added her first minutes in this Champions League. He came into play quickly, but the leading role continued to belong to Pina. In the 74th minute, the forward received from the front and placed a shot with a thread into the top corner to score the fifth, one of the great goals of the night. The sixth was scored by Ewa Pajor in the 84th minute, to close a win that had already left Roma without a response.
Barça and Roma have met three times before in the Champions League and, so far, the balance is completely favorable to the Barça team. The first double confrontation came in the quarterfinals of the 2022-23 season: Barça won 0-1 in Rome and closed the tie with a 5-1 in Barcelona. The third match was last season, again at the Tre Fontane, where Pere Romeu's team won 0-4. In total, Barça has scored 16 goals in the four games and Roma has only finished one. Furthermore, in the two visits to the Italian capital, the Italian team has still not managed to score.
After a start to the season marked by losses, Barça recovers pieces just when the calendar begins to tighten. For the second day of the Champions League, Pere Romeu had Renee Van Asten and the return of the four U-20 World Cup champions (Carla Julià, Aicha, Noa Jiménez and Rosalía), who rejoined the group after the national team's victory. They are joined by Aitana, who already reappeared in the League against Logroño. There are six players who expand the options of a team that until now had had little room to rotate and that faces two highly demanding games in just four days, with the visit to Rome and the Clásico against Real Madrid.
