The England forward Toni Duggan will face a familiar foe when she pulls on the red and white of Atlético Madrid in Manchester on Wednesday night.
The 28-year-old was a key part of the Manchester City project, spending four years at the club and helping them to a first League Cup win, a first Women’s Super League title and another League Cup in 2016, and a first FA Cup in 2017.
Now, she will face her former club for the first time, competitively, since departing for Spain, in the tastiest fixture of the Champions League last 16. The unseeded Arsenal, who are England’s other team in the tournament and who could have faced the holders Lyon, were handed the kinder tie against Slavia Prague.
It has been a tough year for Duggan, who joined Barcelona alongside the star of the Netherlands’ Euro 2017 campaign Lieke Martens to help usher in a new era of investment in Catalonia. She left Barça this summer after a season which the club ended empty handed, having lost a Copa de la Reina semi-final against Atlético and finished six points behind Atléti in the league.
A somewhat surprising Champions League run, helped by a kind draw, to a first final was tempered by a bruising 4-1 defeat to Lyon. While Duggan was hardworking but fairly anonymous at one end of the pitch, a 16-minute hat-trick from Ada Hegerberg up the other end, after Dszenifer Marozsán’s early opener, stole the show and crushed Barça.
Duggan was distraught that night. Tearstained and struggling to stay composed, she said: “It’s disappointing. As a footballer I want to come here and win, I don’t want to just be here for the occasion. I’m really sad, that’s understandable right now but I’m sure I’ll look back on it in the future and realise we created history.”
Looking to put the defeat behind her she left for France with England, but her World Cup campaign was hampered from the off when she picked up a thigh strain in the first training session in the French Riviera. The forward supposedly shook off that knock but did not look her usual self when out on the left wing, with the toll of a long season also undoubtedly playing its part.
But a new season brings a new journey. Duggan, having scored in Barcelona’s 2-0 defeat of Atléti in front of a league record 60,739 fans last campaign, switched to the league winners this summer.
A rollercoaster start to the season, however, has showed that this is not the same Atlético Madrid side that outclassed Manchester City in the round of 32 last season. In their second league game of the season, for example, they suffered a humiliating and shocking 6-1 defeat to Barcelona.
A 90th-minute goal from Virginia Torrecilla ensured a 3-2 victory in Serbia against Spartak Subotica in the Champions League round of 32 first leg before a tense second game ended 1-1 to set up the meeting with City.
The team are third in the league, only a point behind Barça and second-placed Deportivo de la Coruña, and it is not quite time to panic in Madrid, but with the manager José Luis Sánchez Vera departing – for personal, rather than performance-related, reasons according to the club – Atléti are going through a difficult period. The fairly unknown Pablo López, who has managed men’s teams in Segunda B and the third and fourth divisions, has stepped in until the end of the season.
The trip to the north west of England will be his second game in charge, having started with a 1-0 win at Levante on Saturday. The game on Wednesday could not have offered a bigger test of his nascent tenure.
City are flying in all competitions. Nick Cushing’s team are unbeaten and have only conceded once in seven games. Revenge for last season’s frustrating Champions League exit, beaten 2-0 at home after drawing 1-1 in Madrid, will be on their minds too. In Duggan, though, Atlético perhaps have the key to unlocking City if they can take advantage of her knowledge of the opposition manager and pick her brains on how to handle the 11 City players that she has played with internationally.
