FC Barcelona Femení On Verge Of A Record-Breaking 50 Consecutive League Victories

Spanish champions, FC Barcelona Femení, maintained their dominance of their domestic league today by recording their 49th consecutive win in Liga F today and moving to within one victory of recording an unprecedented 50 league wins in succession.

Their victory away to mid-table Sporting Huelva was their fourteenth from fourteen league games this season. That ensured they will be Spain’s winter champions, the nominal title given to the team leading the league at the end of the first half of the campaign.

Should they defeat Levante Las Planas on January 25 at Estadi Johan Cruyff, where they have never failed to win since the stadium was opened in 2019, they will become, according to the world governing body, FIFA, the first team in football history to register 50 consecutive league victories.

Their last defeat in the Spanish league came on June 1, 2021 away to Atlético de Madrid, when Deyna Castellanos scored a late winning goal in a 4-3 victory. Barcelona had by that time already secured the league title having won every previous game in that campaign. But for that one defeat, their current winning streak in the league would stand at a scarcely-believable 82 consecutive victories.

Instead, after winning goal the final five league games of the 2020/21 season, under former coach Lluís Cortés, Barcelona recorded a perfect league season in 2021/22, winning all 30 games out of 30 under current coach Jonatan Giráldez. This season, they have also won every league game they have so far played.

It is not simply that Barcelona keep winning, but their free-flowing style which makes them so dominant. In those 49 matches, they have scored 240 goals (averaging almost five a game) and conceding just 19.

Unlike last season, Barcelona’s winning streak in the first half of this campaign has not stretched across all competitions. Last month, they suffered their first-ever group stage defeat in the UEFA Women’s Champions League, comprehensively defeated 3-1 away to German side FC Bayern Munich at the Allianz Arena.

This week, they played the first game in the Spanish Cup, the Copa de la Reina, a competition they have won in each of the past three seasons. Although they easily defeated second-tier Osasuna by 9-0, the result of the match could be overturned by the Spanish FA (RFEF) this week after they fielded an ineligible player who should have been serving a suspension. Should the RFEF deem they have breached the regulations, Barcelona will be eliminated from the competition and the match recorded as a defeat.

Nevertheless, they retain a perfect record in the league with their 49 consecutive victories far in excess of anything achieved in the men’s game. The European top flight men’s record is held by Lisbon side, SL Benfica, who recorded 29 consecutive league wins over the course of two Portuguese seasons between 1971 and 1973.

In 2017, Welsh side, The New Saints set a European top-flight record of 27 consecutive wins across all competitions. The non-league Jersey Bulls later recorded 36 victories between 2019 and 2021. Both of those were eclipsed by Barcelona last season who won 40 games in a row last season before being beaten 2-0 away to German champions VfL Wolfsburg in the UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-final second leg in April.

Barcelona are still less than halfway to equalling the all-time unbeaten run of 104 games set by Romanian side Steaua București between 1986 and 1989. To eclipse that extraordinary record, Barcelona would need to remain undefeated through this season, the whole of next season and ten games into the 2024/25 campaign.