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MADRID—The ovation when the world-record crowd was introduced on the Camp Nou Stadium was simply as loud as when Barcelona had scored its targets.
Everybody in attendance knew they have been a part of one thing particular: By no means earlier than had so many individuals watched a ladies’s soccer match.
Wednesday’s report crowd of 91,553 on the Champions League sport between Barcelona and Actual Madrid was being celebrated by ladies’s soccer in all places, seen as an illustration of how far the game has come and bringing hope about how far it could actually go.
“Goals DO come true,” Nadine Kessler, UEFA’s chief of girls’s soccer and a former participant, wrote on Twitter. “Historical past made & world report set. Proud to see all of it come collectively, pleased with our sport. An evening to be remembered.”
The earlier report for any ladies’s sport was 90,185 for the 1999 World Cup closing between the USA and China on the Rose Bowl. On the 2012 Olympic closing in London, 80,203 folks noticed the US defeat Japan, 2-1, to win the gold medal.
“Let’s hold it rising,” said the Twitter account of the United States’ women’s national team whereas evaluating the crowds on the Camp Nou and the Rose Bowl.
US stars Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan have been among the many Individuals celebrating the world report on social media.
“A crowd becoming for the workforce on the pitch! You LOVE to see it,” Rapinoe wrote on Twitter.
A stadium-wide mosaic featured the phrases “Greater than Empowerment” on the grandstands of the Camp Nou in a present of help for ladies’s battle for a extra equal society.
“This night, the rationale why it’s unbelievable, (is as a result of) I used to look at (Lionel) Messi or Dani Alves (play right here),” former England participant Alex Scott instructed DAZN Soccer from the Camp Nou. “Now each younger woman is dreaming of taking part in at this stadium, of taking part in in a Champions League sport, and it’s potential as a result of they’re witnessing it.”
The earlier membership report was 60,739 in a match between Atlético Madrid and Barcelona at Atlético’s Wanda Metropolitano Stadium in 2019. The earlier ladies’s Champions League report was 50,212 for a sport between Lyon and Frankfurt in Munich in 2012.
Juventus set an Italy report in its first ladies’s sport on the Allianz Stadium in 2019 with 39,027 folks readily available, and just lately English ladies’s groups have additionally been taking part in at their golf equipment’ fundamental stadiums, together with at Manchester United’s Outdated Trafford.
“Simply taking a look at it, I couldn’t consider there have been 91,000 folks there for a ladies’s sport,” former England participant Karen Carney instructed Sky Sports activities Information. “I used to be a bit emotional wanting again at it. For a protracted, very long time in ladies’s soccer we’ve been after this. … It was wonderful. The game is in an incredible place and it’s solely going to proceed to develop.”
Barcelona is among the hottest groups in ladies’s soccer and gained Wednesday’s match 5-2 to advance to the Champions League semifinals. Madrid was one of many few prime golf equipment in Europe nonetheless with out a ladies’s workforce till a few seasons in the past. Now practically each main membership on the continent has one, although even the skilled ladies’s leagues lag far behind their males’s counterparts with regards to producing income.
It was the primary time Barcelona’s ladies’s workforce performed a match on the Camp Nou in entrance of followers. It had performed on the stadium earlier than however behind closed doorways due to restrictions prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. The workforce normally performs on the a lot smaller Johan Cruyff Stadium, which holds about 6,000 followers. The Camp Nou has a 99,000-capacity.
The match bought out rapidly after free tickets for membership members have been snapped up two months upfront. The most cost effective tickets for non-members have been priced as much as 15 euros ($16).
Ballon d’Or winner Alexia Putellas scored one of many targets for Barcelona and made headlines after the sport for placing the Barcelona-Madrid rivalry apart and taking a photograph with Madrid followers who have been on the Camp Nou.
“I don’t have the phrases to explain it,” Putellas mentioned concerning the sport and the world report. “It was tremendous magical.”
The report got here forward of the 2022 ladies’s European Championship, which will likely be performed in England this summer time.
“What a second for our sport,” mentioned Chelsea participant Bethany England.
Picture credit: AP
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