Barcelona put one foot into the last four of the Women’s Champions League with a comprehensive 6-2 first-leg victory at rivals Real Madrid.<\/p>\n
Ewa Pajor – the Polish international who will face the Republic of Ireland in April when the World Cup qualifiers resume – netted twice alongside further strikes from Esmee Brugts, Irene Paredes, Vicky Lopez and Alexia Putellas’ late penalty to give Barca a resounding victory at the Alfredo di Stefano Stadium.<\/p>\n
Linda Caicedo’s double for the hosts could not stop Madrid from falling to a heavy defeat before the two sides face off again in the quarter-final second leg in Barcelona next Thursday.<\/p>\n
Barcelona cashed in on a bright start with two goals inside the first 13 minutes as Putellas set up Pajor to slide into an empty net before Lopez’s cross found the head of Brugts, whose effort bounced in off the upright.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid got themselves back in the contest through Caicedo’s clever finish past Cata Coll but Barca restored their two-goal advantage before the break through Paredes’ header from Claudia Pina’s inviting corner.<\/p>\n
Barcelona were too good and things were beginning to get ugly after the break when Pajor struck again before Caroline Graham Hansen set up Lopez for a fifth Barca goal.<\/p>\n
Real Madrid did not have much to get excited about in a contest dominated by Pere Romeu’s side but Caicedo gave Madrid a glimmer of hope with her second of the night with a bullet into the top corner before Putellas’ late penalty sealed an impressive win for Barca.<\/p>\n
Watch Czechia v Republic of Ireland on Thursday from 7pm on RT\u00c92 and RT\u00c9 Player. Follow our live blog on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app or listen to commentary on Inside Sport on RT\u00c9 Radio 1.<\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona put one foot into the last four of the Women’s Champions League with a comprehensive 6-2 first-leg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-365014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}