fourth successive Bundesliga title<\/a> on Wednesday after an almost flawless domestic campaign.<\/p>\nBayern hosts Barcelona on Saturday in the first leg of their semifinal and will hope to make amends after the Catalan club romped to a 7-1 win in their last meeting in the league phase.<\/p>\n
Here is a closer look at this weekend\u2019s semifinal first legs:<\/p>\n
Bayern-Barcelona on Saturday<\/p>\n
Barcelona is on a quest to win its fourth title after losing the final to Arsenal last year. The team\u2019s form looks ominous for Bayern after losing just once across all competitions this season, a league defeat in November at Real Sociedad. Barcelona reached the semifinals after a 12-2 aggregate win over old rival Real Madrid, while also beating Madrid 3-0 away between the quarterfinal legs.<\/p>\n
Barcelona has 10 more goals, 32 in total, than any other team, and has conceded five, the fewest. Ewa Pajor has scored seven and Alexia Putellas has chipped in five while setting up another seven.<\/p>\n
Barcelona has also won its last 19 two-legged ties in the competition.<\/p>\n
Arsenal-Lyon on Sunday<\/p>\n
This is a repeat of last year\u2019s semifinal and another reunion of teams that met in the opening round, where Lyon rallied to win 2-1 in London.<\/p>\n
The French champion has won on each of its five previous visits.<\/p>\n
Last season, Arsenal rallied to beat Lyon 4-1 away in the second leg of their semifinal after losing the first leg 2-1.<\/p>\n
Lyon\u2019s Melchie Dumornay and Arsenal\u2019s Mariona Caldentey scored in both legs of that tie.<\/p>\n
Lyon\u2019s 1-0 defeat at Wolfsburg in the quarterfinals was its first loss of the season. It bounced back in the second leg to win in extra time 4-0.<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s form has been mixed. It prevailed over Chelsea by a 3-2 aggregate but lost the second leg 1-0 and followed with a 2-0 loss at home to Brighton & Hove Albion in the FA Cup last weekend.<\/p>\n
The return matches will be in May. The final will be in Oslo on May 23.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN (AP) \u2014 Trophy-holder Arsenal faces eight-time champion Lyon and Barcelona is bidding to reach the Women\u2019s Champions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3447,830,92,266,6626,223,6625,1743,396,4612,2858,3509],"class_list":["post-10609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-barcelona","tag-alexia-putellas","tag-arsenal-fc","tag-barcelona","tag-bayern-munich","tag-ewa-pajor","tag-fc-barcelona","tag-olympique-lyon","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sports-europe","tag-womens-sports","tag-womens-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}