Covid restrictions that have impacted sport events over the past couple of years have made it hard for women’s teams to reclaim their presence in these iconic arenas.
Barcelona’s game at the Nou Camp could provide the push women’s football in Spain needs to get back onto the track they were on before the health crisis.
But these games becoming a regular occurrence is probably unrealistic in the near future. Although Barcelona have the largest crowds in the Spanish league, their average attendance figure is shy of 3,000.
“I’m completely sure we’ll see this more often moving forward, but we have to understand the context,” explains Miki Soria, who has been covering Barcelona Femeni for the last 10 years at SPORT, one of the main sports newspapers in the country.
“For now, I don’t think it’s feasible to play every match at the Nou Camp. We’re still far away from that.”
It’s also unclear how many, out of those 90,000-plus tickets holders, will attend. There’s concern that some season-ticket holders and supporters with invitations might not turn up.
To prevent this, the club has redoubled its marketing efforts over the last couple of weeks to convince everyone with a ticket to be part of this historic event.
Regardless of whether attendance records are broken or not, the excitement around the game should be the encouragement other teams need to bring some of those key matches to the biggest stages. Could the Bernabeu be next?