Fc Bayern Munich will face FC Barcelona in the first leg of the UEFA Women’s Champions League semifinal on Saturday at 6.15pm CET, with the match staged at the Allianz Arena and Linda Dallmann urging fans to fill the stands.
The tie opens with a raw piece of history between the clubs: Barcelona hammered Bayern 7–1 in the teams’ opening league fixture on 7 October — Bayern’s only competitive defeat of the season. Since then Bayern have strung together 26 wins and one draw, were crowned league champions with four matches to spare and finished 15 points clear of Wolfsburg, a run Dallmann framed as proof of progress. "We've come a long way and I believe we're now ready for our second chance," she said.
Barcelona arrive after eliminating Real Madrid in the quarter-finals and as the Spanish champions, while Bayern come in as German title winners; the tie will be decided over two legs, with the second match scheduled for 3 May at Camp Nou. Barcelona have been to the Allianz Arena before — in 2022, when they won 3–1 in the Champions League group stage — which means Bayern’s home ground will be the setting once more for a clash between the nations' best.
Dallmann has not hidden the memory of October’s scoreline. "Winning alone doesn’t bring you closer together. But it is precisely through lessons like this that you try to really work on finding solutions," she said of the 1–7 defeat. She added: "I'm actually glad it's already happened, because we now see what can occur when we're not at our best," and warned plainly: "We must ensure that doesn't happen again." She also made a direct appeal to supporters: "We need everyone on Saturday; that support can give us enormous strength."
Vincent Kompany, speaking as a long-time watcher of the women's game, echoed the call for a packed stadium and underlined the level of the opposition. "My family has been watching women’s football for a long time; we always watched the women’s games when we were in Manchester too," he said, adding: "We’ve also been to Bayern women’s matches three or four times here. It’s fun to watch." Kompany assessed the fixture bluntly: "The quality against Barcelona will be the highest in Europe." He said he hoped the Allianz Arena would be sold out. "I hope the Allianz Arena will be sold out; it should be for this game, in my opinion," he said, and conceded the size of the task: "I hope they can pull off a miracle – because Barcelona are very, very strong in women’s football."
The immediate stakes are simple and stark: Bayern must contain the side that handed them their only loss and prove their remarkable recovery is more than domestic dominance. Barcelona’s route here included a victory over Real Madrid, and their visits to Munich have not always favoured the hosts. The first leg at the Allianz Arena will therefore be both a test of Bayern’s season-long improvement and a measure of whether the German champions can ensure a different result this time.
For Dallmann the semifinal is unmistakably personal as well as tactical. She opened the week by saying the team was ready to seize a second chance and closed with a short, sharp instruction: "We must ensure that doesn't happen again." That demand — from one player who has lived through both the 7–1 defeat and the 26-win recovery that followed — is the clearest barometer of Bayern’s expectations heading into Saturday’s kickoff.
