Barcelona beat Bayern München 7-1 in October's Champions League opener, and the competition has read like their coronation-in-waiting ever since. Saturday at the Allianz Arena, the two sides meet again in the first leg of the last four. Neither of them looks quite like the team that played in October.
The result that closed the book, and the night that might reopen it
On October 7 at the Estadi Johan Cruyff, Barcelona told Bayern what this competition was going to look like. Alexia Putellas after four minutes, Ewa Pajor twice, Esmee Brugts, Salma Paralluelo, Clàudia Pina with a late brace. Klara Bühl pulled one back for Bayern in the 32nd minute and nobody remembers it. Barcelona finished with sixty-eight per cent of the ball and thirteen shots on target to Bayern's two. The first fixture of the year had decided the competition's centre of gravity, and everything since read as confirmation.
Seven months on, the book is back open. Bayern have not lost since. Twenty-five wins and one draw across all competitions, a club-record nineteen Bundesliga victories in a row, the title sealed on Wednesday at Union Berlin with a 3-2 win and Giulia Gwinn off the bench for the winner. Fifteen points clear, four matches to play. Manchester United were dispatched 5-3 on aggregate in the quarter-final, the home leg won by two late goals. The team Barcelona embarrassed is now chasing a quadruple.
The Barcelona that beat Bayern 7-1 is not the Barcelona getting on the plane
Pere Romeu's side clinched Liga F on Wednesday at Espanyol, an eleventh title and a seventh in a row. Twenty-five wins, one defeat, no draws in twenty-six matches, the lone loss a November afternoon at Real Sociedad where Edna Imade scored the penalty that ended their unbeaten run. Four goals a game across this UWCL campaign. Pajor sits on six in the competition and leads Barcelona's season charts alongside Clàudia Pina. On paper, nothing has changed since October.
In practice, the spine has gone. Aitana Bonmatí, three times the Ballon d'Or winner, returned to full team training on Monday after five months out with a fractured fibula, and told Movistar Futbol her target is the second leg at Camp Nou, not Munich. Paralluelo and Irene Paredes were held out of the Espanyol game with post-international-break muscle issues and are touch-and-go for Saturday. Patri Guijarro was withheld Wednesday with an ankle sprain but should return. Laia Aleixandri is long-term out. The 7-1 was built on Bonmatí and Guijarro running the middle and Paralluelo tearing the line; Romeu could fly to Munich with none of that trio at full strength. The squad boarding the plane is not the squad that put seven past Bayern.
What Bayern have become is the other half of the equation
Klara Bühl's eight assists in the league phase set a Women's Champions League record, and the Bayern attack that vanished in October now runs through her on the left, Pernille Harder at centre forward and Linda Dallmann drifting inside off them. Momoko Tanikawa announced this Bayern side at Old Trafford, off the bench with a strike Barcala called "world class" afterwards. Behind them, Giulia Gwinn, Glódís Perla Viggósdóttir and Magdalena Eriksson conceded twice in Manchester but held for the 2-1 home leg and the 5-3 aggregate that put Bayern here.
Lea Schüller, who left Bayern in January after five and a half years and more than a hundred goals, started for United at Old Trafford against the club she had just left; Fridolina Rolfö and Julia Zigiotti Olme, earlier Bayern alumni, were in that side too. Bayern beat them anyway. Twenty thousand tickets had gone for Saturday by Monday, against the twenty-five thousand who turned up for the United quarter-final, an Allianz women's Champions League record. Bayern's only two previous runs to this stage ended against Barcelona in 2018-19 and Chelsea in 2020-21. They have not learned yet how to reach a final.
Pajor is the threat Barcelona still carry
Ewa Pajor spent nine years at Wolfsburg. Five Frauen-Bundesliga titles, the DFB-Pokal in every one of her seasons, two top-scorer awards, three Champions League finals in green and white. She left for Barcelona in summer 2024 with 134 goals for Wolfsburg and an understanding of German football no other player on Saturday's pitch will match. Her brace at the Johan Cruyff opened the lead that became the 7-1; a third in Munich would put her on seven for the campaign and leave Barcelona with a cushion to take home.
Kick-off at the Allianz is 18:15 CEST. The second leg is at Camp Nou on Sunday May 3, by which point Bonmatí may be back and Paralluelo, Paredes and Guijarro back to full sharpness. That is the problem Bayern's Saturday result has to get ahead of. Barcelona at Camp Nou with Bonmatí back is a different team again. Bayern found out in October what that team can do to them. Saturday is when they get to answer.
