UEFA Women's Champions League: Players to watch on Matchday 1
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
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We pick out four players hoping to give new clubs a flying start in the opening group games.
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As the UEFA Women's Champions League group stage begins on Tuesday and Wednesday, we look at four players who moved clubs in the summer aiming to get their new teams off to flying starts.
Esmee Brugts (Barcelona)
Coming into a Barcelona side that has won this competition twice in the last three years, and only missed one final since 2019, is a daunting task but that is the lot of the versatile Brugts, who arrived from PSV Eindhoven in August to take the place of Manchester United-bound Geyse.
The 20-year-old usually operates wide left in attack, but has a strong right foot and can also be deployed as wing-back. Hoping to have the same impact at Barcelona as her Netherlands team-mate Lieke Martens, Brugts has an eye for a spectacular goal, and it was her last-gasp whipped ball from the left that went all the way in to send her country to this year's FIFA Women's World Cup.
Kadidiatou Diani (Lyon)
Diani became the latest player to cross from Paris Saint-Germain to arch-rivals Lyon after a sixth and final season with the capital club in which she had scored a league-leading 17 goals, not to mention six more in Europe on the way to the quarter-finals.
That was also when Lyon's title defence ended on penalties at Chelsea, but adding Diani to an attack already containing the likes of fit-again Ada Hegerberg, resurgent Eugénie Le Sommer, Dzsenifer Marozsán and Vicki Becho (not to mention the currently injured Delphine Cascarino) makes the eight-time European champions an even more formidable force, as they have been displaying domestically this season already. Diani's all-round forward play, creativity and finishing has played a key part.
Magdalena Eriksson (Bayern München)
Sweden defender Eriksson has been as integral in her six Chelsea seasons as Diani was at Paris, but she too switched in the close season, moving to Bayern along with Pernille Harder. With 12 trophies at the Blues, but none of them the Women's Champions League, Eriksson joins a club similarly keen to add a continental title to their domestic honours.
Eriksson's aerial strength, positioning and leadership qualities have made her a world-leading centre-back, and recently for Sweden she has proved a goalscoring threat in the air from set pieces too.
Mia Fishel (Chelsea)
While Eriksson and Harder departed Chelsea, there was no surprise that Emma Hayes was able to recruit formidable replacements for what will be her final attempt to claim the Champions League crown with the Blues. Among those arriving was American forward Fishel, who struck 35 goals in 46 games last season in helping Tigres UANL win the Mexican title, in the autumn Apertura becoming the Liga MX Femenil's first foreign top scorer.
Fishel has immediately impressed on her arrival in England, scoring in a superb competitive debut against Tottenham Hotspur at Stamford Bridge, thrilling the fans of a club she herself has supported since she was eight. Fishel had made her senior United States bow the week before that game.