Amalie Vangsgaard Aims To Rewrite History For PSG Against Lyon In UWCL

Ahead of the record 11th UEFA Women's Champions League meeting between Paris Saint-Germain and Lyon, Amalie Vangsgaard hopes her club can rewrite the familiar narrative between the two sides.

The giants of the French women's game have occupied the top two positions in ten of the last eleven league seasons, with Lyon finishing as champions in all but one of those campaigns. Similarly, in the UEFA Women's Champions League, this season, the pair have been drawn together for a seventh time in a decade. Lyon have won all three previous semi-finals and the 2017 final between the two.

Lyon are once more clear at the top of the French league, assured of top spot with two matches to play. However, this time the title will be decided by the first time by end-of-season play-offs which give PSG an opportunity to wrest the championship from Lyon and in the Champions League, they will host the decisive second leg next weekend after a first game in Lyon on Saturday.

The reigning Danish women's Player of the Year, Vangsgaard is now the last remaining player from her country in this season's UEFA Women's Champions League. Should Paris Saint-Germain win their first-ever Champions League title, Vangsgaard could join an elite list of Danes to win the competition. Lousie Hansen, three times a winner of the UEFA Women's Cup with 1. FFC Frankfurt, is the only Danish woman to play in a European champion winning team. Signe Bruun was a non-playing member of the Lyon squad who won the title in 2022.

Only seven Danish men have played in Champions League winning teams so for Vangsgaard winning the title "would be huge, it would be really, really big. A big dream coming true. Now we have Lyon in the semi-final and have to get past them before thinking about the final."

For Vangsgaard to be playing at the top of the women's game is all the more remarkable considering the fact that she gave up the sport just two years after making her debut in the competition for Fortuna Hjørring aged just 17.

At the time, she did not know if she would return to the game, or even what other career path she would take. Instead, she travelled the world, ticking a variety of experiences off her bucket list such as bungee jumping and swimming with sharks. Speaking to me from Paris, she admitted "I think I was just enjoying being young, I don't know if you can maybe call it a gap year after college. Having fun, and taking it a little day by day."

It took a phone call from her former Fortuna coach Brian Sørensen, who was looking for a striker at his new club, to convince Vangsgaard to give the game another go. "I think he just took a chance trying to call me. I don't remember us keeping in touch actually. I was surprised when he called."

"He started at FC Nordsjælland, they wanted to try and get into the top division in Denmark. They needed some players to qualify. The project part of it, trying to help the club in women's football, was a good way to get back into the game."

Two years later, Vangsgaard moved to Linköpings FC in Sweden where being deployed as a central striker revolutionised her career. 22 goals during the 2022 season - the majority as a result of one-touch finishing - made her the top scorer in the Damallsvenskan but were insufficient to earn her a place in Denmark's squad for the UEFA Women's Euro in England.

Still uncapped at the age of 25, did she think her chance to play at international level had passed? "I dont think I was stressing that much about it," she told me. "I hadn't been in camp really before the Euros, so I think I would have been surprised to play at the tournament. But I think it was a good time in my career, I was developing a lot. So, I think it was fair to not bring me to the Euros."

Later that year, she did earn her first call-up and was selected in Denmark's squad for the following year's Women's World Cup, the first time her country had qualified for the finals since 2007. However, on the eve of the tournament she suffered a muscle injury which almost caused her to withdraw from the tournament.

Vangsgaard recovered her fitness two days before their first match to make an historic impact for her nation at the championship. This, in spite of Denmark's initial choice to play their most creative player, Pernille Harder, as a central striker in their opening two games.

"I think going into the World Cup, I was still getting into the national team, getting established. So I don't think my expectation was to start all the games. I think Pernille and I are two very different players, so playing with Pernille as a nine, it's a tactical choice. I think it turned out pretty well, the World Cup."

With Denmark struggling to break down a stubborn Chinese defense, Vangsgaard was brought on with five minutes remaining and made an instant impact, scoring a last-minute winner. In doing so, she became the first woman to score for her country at the World Cup in sixteen years. It was her first-ever international goal, delivered on the biggest stage, a header which earned her the Visa Player of the Match Award for a five-minute cameo.

"The whole thing with the story, being injured three days before the game - I don't think I had seen it coming to score the goal in the first game. The adrenaline just exploded. I think it was a very important goal for the team to move on from the group stage. It was an amazing moment and I think my family and my friends at home were also touched by it."

Vangsgaard had signed for Paris Saint-Germain on a two and a half year contract in January 2023. At the time, the club's record goalscorer Marie-Antoinette Katoto was a long-term absentee after suffering a ruptured anterior cruciate at UEFA Women's Euro 2022.

This season, Katoto was returned and the club have also signed another star striker, Malawi's Tabitha Chawinga, the top scorer in Italy's Serie A, on a season-long loan. Vangsgaard's opportunities to start as a number nine have therefore been limited.

It is a situation she accepts is necessary at a club with aspirations of winning the Champions League. "When you sign with a club like PSG, it's what you expect to have some of the best players around you. Tabitha and Marie are two amazing players and I can learn a lot from them, like I can learn a lot from my other team mates. I see it as a benefit to be surrounded by big players and finding my way into the team."

Despite, starting the Champions League quarter-final second leg victory over BK Häcken alongside both in a dynamic front three, Vangsgaard has often played out of position. She has even filled in at right wing back earlier in the season, a position she has not occupied since her early days in the game.

"Obviously I prefer to play in the number nine, like in the national team," she reveals to me. "I am a very offensive player so that's where I feel like I play more naturally. Playing wing-back is also fun and I actually like to play there also."

Fun, rather than with fear, is how PSG will approach yet another Champions League showdown with Lyon, despite the fact that their opponents have extinguished their trophy aspirations so often in the past.

Vangsgaard, who was not part of those six previous Champions League ties, tells me "I think we are always excited to meet Lyon. They know us, and we know them. So it's always a good game. Often when we play each other, the game turns out to be really nice football. So I think, it's a fun game to play in. I sense that is also how the rest of the team is feeling."