Chelsea have mountain to climb as Barca Achilles heel shows again

Chelsea are used to winning in England - but when it comes to facing Barcelona in Europe, they keep hitting trouble.

When the Blues were drawn against them in the semi-finals of the Women's Champions League for the third year in a row, their hearts must have sunk.

The defending champions have caused plenty of heartache for Chelsea, knocking them out of the competition in each of the past two seasons and beating them 4-0 in their debut final back in 2021.

But with new manager Sonia Bompastor in charge - someone who has won the competition with former club Lyon - and fresh players in the squad, Chelsea travelled to Spain on Sunday for this season's first leg, optimistic that things could be different.

Instead, Barcelona were ruthless, defeating them 4-1 at the Estadi Johan Cruyff.

It leaves them with a huge challenge in the second leg at Stamford Bridge next Sunday (14:00 BST).

"We came into this game thinking about it being a good opportunity to perform and to show our best," said Bompastor.

"I think the version we showed was not good enough for us to hope to have a better result. We must learn from that.

"We want to move forward and turn things around next week. It will be difficult but in football you have to believe."

Click here to read article