Chelsea registered a 1-0 win over Lyon in the first leg of their Women’s Champions League quarter-final at the Groupama Stadium on Wednesday night.
The Blues will now look to take that narrow aggregate lead into next week’s second leg at Kingsmeadow, making them slight favorites to reach the last four of the competition.
The ever-impressive Guro Reiten scored the only goal of the game in the first half, curling a delicious shot past Christian Endler with her weak right foot after being played in by returnee Erin Cuthbert.
Lauren James almost scored a surprise second for Chelsea before the interval, running the ball down the right and unleashing a speculative strike with his left foot that crashed into the far post and bounced clear.
Sam Kerr didn’t see much of the ball during the 90 minutes but may have thought she could have done better with a good chance in the second half which she missed.
Lyon saw more of the ball and took more shots overall. But, disappointingly for the home crowd, the eight-time winners and defending champions lacked the cutting edge quality to break down a resilient Chelsea back-line which included Kadisha Buchanan against her former club.
Delphine Cascarino hit the post early in the second half and the pressure mounted late in the final leg, but the leveller never came.
The only blemish on an otherwise top night for Chelsea was the loss of Millie Bright to injury in the first half.
GK: Endler (6); RB: Carpenter (7), CB: Gilles (7), CB: Renard (7), LB: Moroni (6); cm: Horan (6), cm: Agurola (6), cm: Mrozson (6); RW: Cascarino (7), scheduled tribe: Le Sommer (5), LW: Dabritz (6)
sub: Bechel (6), van de Donck (7), Bach, (6), Mallard (6), Mazari (7)
GK: burgers (7); RB: Pariset (7), CB: Buchanan (8), CB: bright (7), LB: Carter (7); cm: Lupolz (7), cm: Ingle (7); RM: James (8), AM: Cuthbert (8), lm: retain(8), scheduled tribe: Ker (6)
sub: Eriksson (6), Charles (6), Wrighting Canrid (N/A), Mjelde (N/A)