There was a moment, shortly before half-time, when the Chelsea left wing-back Niamh Charles thought she had done it. ‘It’ being escaping from one-on-one duel with Barcelona’s Caroline Graham Hansen at the umpteenth time of asking with the ball in her possession.
Charles skated free of the forward, who scrambled to stay on her feet in front of the dugouts, with all the enthusiasm of a child that had just beaten their older sibling in a card game for the first time. Except it was a false alarm, the referee’s whistle halting Charles’ charge and pulling the ball back towards the spot where Graham Hansen was fouled by the England player.
As in the first leg of Chelsea’s Champions League semi-final showdown with Barcelona, Charles’s flank quickly became the focal point of Barcelona’s attack, leaving the Chelsea captain Magda Eriksson brutally exposed on the left-hand side of the back three. It was a familiar story. In the 2021 Champions League final, Barcelona left inexperienced full-backs Charles and Jess Carter in their wake as they scored four inside 36 minutes.
Two years later, in the first leg at Stamford Bridge, and Chelsea were a goal down inside four minutes. Graham Hansen was the architect, driving towards the edge of the box as Chelsea players stood off her, before unleashing a wicked left-footed strike into the far corner. In contrast to the final, a collapse was staved off, but the gulf in class between the two sides was more than evident.
At Camp Nou, which began to heave from about 15 minutes in as fans filtered in for the early kick-off at the end of the working day, Graham Hansen was rampant and unsparing as she ravaged Chelsea’s left flank. The Norwegian forward would put the ball in the back of the net early again, in the ninth minute this time, having ducked in front of Charles to collect the ball left for her by Eriksson before VAR ruled the effort out for her having controlled the ball with her arm in the process.
There was no halting the forward though, who before the half-hour mark would leave Charles on the ground before picking out Marta Torrejon to fire over the bar.
Charles struggled, but there can be little shame in struggling to contain one of the best wingers in the game, one who is criminally underrated. That Graham Hansen has never even made the short-list for the Ballon d’Or, frankly, makes a mockery of the award that bids to recognise the world’s best players. After she was omitted from the list in the year when Barcelona swaggered to that 4-0 Champions League final victory over Chelsea, the forward felt the need to respond on Twitter, such was the noise over her absence.
“To everyone who is wondering. It’s all good,” she said. “We won the treble and we are working our asses off to achieve this again. All that matters and the only thing that matters.”
Also absent that year, 2022, was Aitana Bonmatí, who is the metronome of the Barcelona attack and whose link-up play with Graham Hansen against Chelsea was a highlight. It was fitting, then, that the goal that would put Barcelona two goals up in the tie, albeit with Chelsea getting one back through fellow Norwegian forward Guro Reiten, would come from the deadly Bonmatí-Graham Hansen axis.
Released by Mariona Caldentay, Bonmatí’s deft first touch set her sweeping length of the Chelsea half, she played the ball through to Graham Hansen and the forward’s strike could only be cleared into the inside side netting by an overstretched Carter, with the goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger beaten.
The Spaniard Alexia Putellas may be the crown jewel of a Barcelona side with a wealth of talent that has coped unerringly well with the loss of her sparkle following her ACL injury on the eve of the Euros last year, but it is the Norwegian Graham Hansen that is the driving force of Barcelona’s unstoppable wide play.
There are rumours that the golden girl of Norwegian women’s football and the first woman to win the Ballon d’Or, Ada Hegerberg, could be tempted away from eight-time European champions, Lyon, by the Catalan club. She would be a Galactico-style signing. In Graham Hansen though, who extended her contract with the club in January until June 2026, Barcelona have a quality Norwegian forward deserving of a similar spotlight.
