When Arsenal proclaimed on Friday afternoon that 57,000 tickets had already been sold for the second leg of their Champions League semi-final against Wolfsburg at the Emirates Stadium on Monday evening, Katie McCabe couldn’t but smile.
“When I first signed for Arsenal seven and a half years ago,” she said, “a couple of hundred would have been pretty cool at Meadow Park.”
Come Sunday morning, that smile would have been broader still, the club announcing that all 60,000 tickets had been sold, meaning that the Arsenal women will play in front of a capacity crowd at the Emirates for the first time ever.
Last Thursday, Barcelona booked their place in the final with a 1-1 draw against Chelsea, having won the first leg 1-0, that match played in front of a crowd of 72,262 at the Nou Camp. Attendance-wise, then, these are heady days for the women’s Champions League. The organisers might, then, regret choosing Eindhoven’s Philips Stadion as the venue for the final on June 3rd – its capacity is just 35,000.
It’s already been a momentous season for McCabe for both club and country, Arsenal having reached the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in a decade – when of all people, Wolfsburg beat them, 4-1 on aggregate. If you need an indication of Niamh Fahey’s longevity, McCabe’s current Irish team-mate was in the Arsenal team that day.
Wolfsburg went on to beat Lyon in the final, retaining the title a year later, but, like Arsenal, have been trying to recapture former glories ever since. Arsenal have only been European champions once, back in 2007, the competition then called the Uefa Cup.
If McCabe can lead her team to victory over Wolfsburg, that game in Eindhoven would be, by far, the biggest of her club career, but it will be no easy task against the Germans – not least because the London team will be without four of their most important players, captain Kim Little (hamstring), McCabe skippering the side in her absence, Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema and Leah Williamson (all ACL injuries).
Wolfsburg could be without their captain too, the legend that is Alexandra Popp struggling to overcome the Achilles tendon injury that forced her to miss the first leg. But in that game they were able to field a side that featured six German and three Dutch internationals, as well as one each from Iceland and Poland – the latter represented by Ewa Pajor, the top scorer in the Champions League this season.
[ Katie McCabe captains Arsenal to gritty Champions League comebackOpens in new window ]
But despite that brutal injury list, their Australian international Caitlin Foord also missing the game with a hamstring problem, Arsenal showed no little grit in the first leg when they came back to earn a draw, having found themselves 2-0 down after just 24 minutes.
They’ll need to show the same resolve at the Emirates on Monday evening if they are to book their place in the final. You’d suspect McCabe won’t be lacking on that front.
The match can be seen live on DAZN’s YouTube channel, kick-off 5.45.
