Preview: Wolfsburg v. Paris
Women's football•
Following their 1-0 win over Dijon FCO at the weekend, Les Parisiennes are set to travel to Wolfsburg this week to get their 2025–2026 UEFA Women's Champions League campaign underway.
A return to the European stage with a new format
Paris Saint-Germain will be out for revenge as it makes its return to the UEFA Women's Champions League for the 2025–2026 campaign, this time without having needed to go through the qualifying rounds. For this season's edition, the competition has undergone a complete overhaul, with a new model similar to the one that was inaugurated for the men's UEFA Champions League in 2024. As a result, the group stage has been replaced by an 18-team league phase.
While the teams that finish in the top four spots of this league table will qualify directly for the competition's quarter-finals, those finishing between fifth and 12th place will face each other in the knockout phase play-offs, where the fifth-placed to eighth-placed sides will be seeded and the ninth-placed to 12th-placed sides will be unseeded.
During this action-packed league phase, Les Parisiennes will face six different teams: three at home and three away.
First up: European veterans VfL Wolfsburg
Les Rouge et Bleue will begin their campaign with a heavyweight clash against a Wolfsburg side that certainly knows a thing or two about competing at the highest level of the European game. As well as being twice winners of the competition – doing so in 2013 and in 2014 – and reaching the final on three further occasions, the Germans have already faced Paris Saint-Germain twice in the UWCL: firstly in the semi-finals in 2014–2015, when Les Parisiennes ran out 3-2 winners on aggregate, and then in the quarter-finals in 2022–2023, when Die Wölfinnen got their own back with a 2-1 aggregate victory.
So, Paris will be firmly intent on regaining the upper hand in this fixture tomorrow evening, particularly as the hosts are currently in fine form, having avoided defeat in each of their first five games of the league season and sitting joint top of the Frauen-Bundesliga table as a result. In addition to their red-hot attack, the team from Lower Saxony will be going into this match with a full squad, including the evergreen Alexandra Popp, who, at 34 years old, is now the club's second-top scorer of all time.
Paris on the up
Les Parisiennes got some much-needed confidence back at PSG Campus last weekend, when a Sakina Karchaoui penalty was enough to earn a 1-0 win over Dijon FCO, with new signings Olga Carmona and Isabela also making their first starts for the club. As a result, Paulo César's women not only moved to within five points of top spot in the Arkema Première Ligue table but also kept their first clean sheet of the season, just in time for their first European away game of 2025–2026.
Relive Les Parisiennes' 1-0 win over Dijon on Matchday 4 of the Arkema Première Ligue.
Going into this encounter, the Paris squad has also shown a clean bill of health on top of the confidence boost that they gained from Saturday's victory, which the aforementioned Karchaoui was keen to emphasise.
“We were aiming to win in order to give ourselves some confidence ahead of our Champions League campaign. We can’t wait to get going again in this competition.”
So, this Matchday 1 clash promises to be a feisty one at Wolfsburg Stadion, but Les Rouge et Bleue undoubtedly have what's needed to withstand the hosts' attacking threat and perhaps even to come away from Germany with a win.
