FC Bayern Women and Real Madrid will meet for the first time in the UEFA Women’s Champions League on Wednesday evening, with kickoff set for 18:45 CET at the Sportpark in Unterhaching. It is a new fixture, but not a new storyline for Real Madrid: a club that entered women’s football only recently is now being tested on one of Europe’s biggest stages.
That timing is what gives the Bayern Vs Real Madrid search its edge today. The match is on Matchday 3 in the league phase, and it arrives with Real Madrid still chasing the first trophy in the club’s history. Melanie Leupolz has said Bayern can play a big role in Europe, and this is exactly the kind of night that could show how far that claim stretches.
Real Madrid Femenino was officially established on 1 July 2020, but the road to that point started much earlier. Ana Rossell first asked Lorenzo Sanz in 1997, when she was 17, for Real Madrid to form a women’s team. She later founded CD Tacón in Madrid in 2014, and after CD Tacón were promoted to the Primera División in the 2018/19 season, Real Madrid announced on 25 June 2019 that it intended to establish its own women’s football division. The club’s general assembly later approved integrating CD Tacón by 810 out of 894 votes.
That history matters because the project has moved quickly, even if the silverware has not followed. Real Madrid finished second behind FC Barcelona in their first season after refoundation, third only in the 2021/22 campaign, and otherwise have been Spain’s second-best side. Kosovare Asllani, Sofia Jakobsson, Babett Peter, Olga Carmona and Misa Rodríguez were among the names that shaped those early years, but the missing piece has remained the same: the first trophy.
So Wednesday is not only a first meeting between FC Bayern Women and Real Madrid. It is also another check on whether a team built in stages, and still without a title, can turn rapid growth into a result that changes how it is judged in Europe. The answer begins at the Sportpark in Unterhaching, and for Real Madrid it will be measured in more than the scoreline.
