Fridolina Rolfö Admits She Cannot Stop Thinking About Playing At Camp Nou

“I am thinking about it when I wake up and when I am going to sleep” admits Fridolina Rolfö speaking about FC Barcelona’s Women’s Champions League match against Real Madrid at a sold-out Camp Nou on Wednesday in a game which may be played before a world record attendance for a women’s sporting event.

The match will be the first the defending European champions have played at their iconic club ground in front of spectators after a behind closed doors league match against Espanyol in January 2021. Now with fans once more allowed through the turnstiles, the game incredibly sold-out the biggest stadium in Europe within four days.

With over 90,000 tickets now sold, the match against Real Madrid could break the attendance record for a professional women’s sporting event set at the Rose Bowl in 1999 when 90,185 watched the United States defeat China in the Women’s World Cup final.

Rolfö who only signed for the club in July is yet to play at Camp Nou. Twice a silver medalist with Sweden at successive Olympics, she missed the opportunity to play in front of over 70,000 fans at the legendary Maracanã during Rio 2016 after fracturing her metatarsal in an earlier match. Last year during Tokyo 2020, she played in the final but in a 72,000-capacity stadium without spectators due to the Covid restrictions in place during the Games.

Therefore, Wednesday’s match will be extra special for her. She told me “it means a lot. These are the games you want to play as a footballer. This is what you practice every day for, reaching games like this. A quarter-final playing at Camp Nou, it’s something you love to do. Now we’re here, we’re going to make the best out of it.”

The team has won every single match they have played this season including the first leg of the quarter-final tie against Real Madrid last week but they have never played in front of a home crowd in excess of the 12,764 who watched their 2019 Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich. Today, the squad were paid a surprise visit by former men’s team captain Carles Puyol who talked to them about his experiences of the match known as El Clásico and what it is like to play at a full Camp Nou.

“It’s hard to get a picture of how it will be”, says Rolfö. “When you are out there, you will feel that the people are there, but you are so focused on everything you are doing on the field so sometimes you just realize before and after the game how cool it is. That’s when you can enjoy it.”

Barcelona have not lost a meaningful game outright since August 2020 when Rolfö scored against them in the Champions League semi-final playing for her previous side VfL Wolfsburg. I asked her how she thought Barcelona had changed since that day when they dominated the play but finished up losing the game. “You can see physically it is a team that is stronger. That I would say is the big difference from when I played against them. They are also more effective as a team. I think there’s so many reasons why the club is so successful.”

One of those reasons is the way the club have successfully integrated their star foreign players like Rolfö alongside their core of homegrown talent. Rolfö had played the majority of her career as a buccaneering winger or forward but the coaching staff at Barcelona identified her as someone who could potentially play at left back within their system.

She is indebted to the way the club have helped her adapt both on and off the pitch. “They have helped me a lot especially with the language at the beginning, trying to understand everything, how we are playing, how it works here. I felt comfortable right away. Also the players, they were helping, and the staff, so it made it easier to adapt to the new environment and I’m really happy for that.”

Rolfö refutes suggestions that a lack of motivation may eventually hold back a squad which have already won their domestic league and scored at least three goals in 34 of the 36 matches they have played this season. “The best part about being at Barcelona is winning! The feeling that you do not want to lose because you are so used to winning. The challenge every day to go and win every game, that’s what I like the most, the competitive part.”

After nine months at the club, Rolfö, who has previously played for three different sides in the UEFA Women’s Champions League, feels Barcelona stands above them all. “It’s the best team I’ve played with and I’ve been playing with good teams I have to say. For me, there is something unique about this group of people.”

Nonetheless, the match will not be a foregone conclusion. In the first leg, Madrid led at half-time before conceding a controversial penalty which changed the game. “We’ve been talking about it” reveals Rolfö. “We were not happy with our first half in the match against Real Madrid. We know we can make it better but we really showed in the second half that we were unhappy and we wanted to show how good we were and I think we really showed a good mentality. We learned something from this game.”

Now on Wednesday, they will look to complete the job and make the semi-finals of the competition for the fourth successive year. “It’s something really, really big and I can’t wait to play the game”, Rolfö says adding “I hope there’s a lot of young girls sitting in the stands and dreaming about playing there one day.”