FC Barcelona To Be First Opponents For AS Roma Women At Stadio Olimpico

Spanish champions FC Barcelona will be the opponents for Italian side, AS Roma Women when they play their first-ever senior match at the legendary Stadio Olimpico after today’s UEFA Women’s Champions League draw which paired the two teams at the quarter-final stage of the competition to be held in March.

In their debut season in the competition, AS Roma are the only side in the last eight never to have reached this stage of the UEFA Women’s Champions League. They will become the 55th different team to play in the last eight of the competition. Only founded in 2018 and runners-up in the Italian league last season, Roma had to come through two qualifying rounds to even make the group stage. There, they won four games out of six and drew with German champions, VfL Wolfsburg to qualify with an impressive 13 points from a possible 18.

Roma play all their Serie A home games at the 4,000-capacity Stadio dello Tre Fonte within the city limits. However due to a lack of floodlights at that ground, they moved their three home matches during the UEFA Women’s Champions League group phase to the 9,398-capacity Stadio Domenico Francioni, home of men’s third-tier side U.S. Latina Calcio, over 40 miles south-east of the Italian capital.

In the knockout stages of the UEFA Women’s Champions League, the European governing body stipulate the use of Video Assistant Referees (VAR). This requirement, and the opportunity to maximize ticketing revenue against high-profile European opposition, has persuaded the club to play the game at their 70,000-capacity Stadio Olimpico.

Last season, seven of the teams in the last eight moved their UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final ties to their club’s main stadium. The one exception being Real Madrid whose women’s team are yet to play a game at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. Including a then-world record attendance of 91,553 at Camp Nou for FC Barcelona’s 5-2 win over Real Madrid, a staggering 150,125 fans attended the four second leg ties, an average of 37,531 a game.

This season, in addition to AS Roma, French sides Olympique Lyonnais and Paris Saint-Germain and FC Barcelona have once more already committed to moving their quarter-final ties to the club’s main ground. Now the knockout stage draw has been completed, all of the remaining teams involved are expected to follow in the coming days.

First opened in 1953, in anticipation of the 1960 Rome Olympics, the Stadio Olimpico has hosted every major match in men’s football including the 1968 and 1980 European Championship finals, the 1990 FIFA World Cup final and four men’s UEFA Champions League finals in 1977, 1984, 1996 and 2009.

Last month, during the men’s team’s 1-0 victory over Bologna in front of a crowd of 62,092, the women’s team were introduced to the fans at the Stadio Olimpico as they went on a lap of honor around the ground parading the Italian Supercoppa which they won for the first time in November by defeating league champions Juventus on penalties after a 1-1 draw in Parma.

The following week, the club confirmed they would play their UEFA Women’s Champions League quarter-final first leg at the Stadio Olimpico after they were given the green light by the city council and Ministry of Sport and Health. The reigning Coppa Italia winnners – the first title in their five-year history – Roma are this season top of Serie A, five points ahead of Juventus, who have won the last five league titles in succession.

Last week, the league leaders also pulled off a major transfer coup by signing former Spanish international midfielder, Vicky Losada from Manchester City on a short-term contract until the end of the season. Catalan born and bred, Losada was club captain of the FC Barcelona side which won the UEFA Women’s Champions League in 2021 but never got to play at Camp Nou during her time there. She will now get to fulfill that ambition in the second leg wearing the colors of an opposition team.

Upon Losada’s signing last week, Betty Bavagnoli, the AS Roma Head of Women’s Football said that “her experience, leadership and quality on the ball will provide great examples to some of our young players and will play a pivotal role in the continued growth of our squad.”

Elsewhere in the draw, defending European champions Olympique Lyonnais were drawn against English champions Chelsea in another mouth-watering quarter-final with the winners to play whichever team comes through the AS Roma v FC Barcelona tie in the semi-finals.

FC Bayern Munich will play Arsenal with the winners of that tie to play either Paris Saint-Germain or VfL Wolfsburg in the last four. The first leg of each quarter-final tie will be played on either March 21 or 22, with the return legs on March 29 and 30.