The Blues claimed a 1-0 semi-final first-leg victory over Barcelona in the Women's Champions League on Saturday afternoon in what could prove a crucial advantage going into the second leg
Jess Carter loves a semi-final.
Last summer, it was her goalline clearance against Australia in an England shirt, instinctively flicking the ball away with Emily van Egmond geared to pounce in one of the game's more pivotal moments.
On Saturday, it was her implacable and relentless interventions to frustrate Barcelona, reducing whole chances into halves and the reigning European champions into petulant frowns at the final whistle. Salma Paralluelo looked down at her feet in the penalty box at one point with the bewildered expression of a person lost, a blur of Carter sliding where a ball should've been, like a scene from Scooby Doo: all hilarious reality-bending speed and angles.
Rightfully, the 26-year-old beamed a pearly-white smile at the cameras following Chelsea's Champions League semi-final first leg 1-0 win over Barcelona as she hoisted the Player of the Match trophy into the air. It’s a laurel the England defender is technically familiar with, even if that familiarity spans a whole decade, a lifetime and more in football years.
But you don’t forget the frissons of a debut and you certainly don’t forget the lust of a Champions League Player of the Match trophy. Carter claimed both on the same day, a 2-0 quarter-final win over Arsenal cut in her image. Ten years on, she's done so again, this time with the sensation that all the talk of potential a decade earlier is coming to its full fruition.
And talk of potential and ceilings was rife following Carter's Birmingham debut when the football landscape looked to open up to this generational talent's swagger and quality. A handful of years later, the Young Player of the Year award arrived for her glittering displays in the Women’s Super League. A call-up to England followed. A big move to serial winners Chelsea. Things only looked up.
Carter’s travails at Chelsea are well documented, from being forced onto a micromanaged diet by coaching staff to Emma Hayes holding nothing back in giving hard life lessons. Carter accepted the challenge, sometimes begrudgingly, other times with a searing commitment to prove her doubters wrong. The upshots? An un-droppable presence in England and Chelsea’s back three. An historic World Cup run. A first-ever victory over Barcelona for the Blues. Barcelona’s first home competitive loss in more than five years and a first home competitive match in six years in which they failed to score.
Make no mistake: consigning Barcelona to these broken statistics was as much down to Erin Cuthbert's singular moment of brilliance (aided by Mayra Ramirez’s tenacity to win the ball back in Barcelona’s final third and Sjoeke’s Nusken’s awareness to shuffle the ball to Cuthbert) as it was to Carter’s defensive display, alongside fellow defender Kadeisha Buchanan and the tireless running of Cuthbert.
But Carter was the standout brick wall here, growing from her more modest five-foot-five-inch frame to something more domineering and impenetrable and instinctive whenever Barcelona faced towards goal. Handling the likes of Paralluelo and Mariona Caldentey and eventually Alexia Putellas – names perennially on FIFA Best and Ballon d’Or lists – without any sign of ruffled concern is a feat in itself. Doing so in Saturday’s arena with the blinding pressure of a first-ever European title on the line, a salvation mission for a trophy-hunting season potentially going wrong is quite another.
For Chelsea, this is frontier territory. Where Barcelona have routinely and historically run out on the right side of the margins against Emma Hayes’ side, on Saturday, they weren’t so fortunate. Hayes was, understandably, tempered in her post-match reflections. Barcelona are holders for a reason. Atypical performances happen, even for seemingly perfectly mechanised operations (Hayes knows this truth better than any). Barcelona will arrive in west London with a score to settle and a point to prove.
But Carter will still be there, and if her trajectory in the last year is anything to go by, her performance will likely only be better than the last.
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