This final belonged to Ewa Pajor and Ewa Pajor only

Five unsuccessful Champions League finals. Reaching the biggest match in women’s football so many times was already an achievement in itself,  yet the Polish star always walked away defeated. Until one May evening in Oslo in 2026.

Ewa Pajor knew the feeling all too well. The silence after the final whistle. The medal burning around her neck. Watching the opposition lift the trophy she had imagined in her own hands for so many years. With Wolfsburg, she reached the Champions League final five times. Five times she walked away without the trophy. And last year when she reached final with Barcelona and got defeated by Arsenal it almost looked that she might be cursed.

Barcelona defeated Lyon 4:0 and once again confirmed that the last few years belong to them. A fourth Champions League title in six seasons. Yet in Oslo, the final did not initially unfold as comfortably as the scoreline suggests.

The first half belonged to Lyon. The French side controlled possession, dictated the tempo, and forced Cata Coll into several important saves that kept Barcelona in game. Lyon's Lindsey Heaps, who is leaving the frech side after this season, even found the net, only for VAR to rule the goal out for offside. Barcelona looked nervous, and Pajor herself missed a huge chance. For a moment, it felt as though her curse in finals might be returning once again. Barcelona didn't even targeted a goal in the first half. 

But football has two halves and 90 minutes. Then came the second half.  The first goal arrived shortly after the restart. An instinctive run, a clinical finish, minimal touches. The second, just minutes later, finally broke Lyon’s resistance. 

Finally hers

She could even have left with a hat-trick. But for Barcelona’s third goal, rather than shooting herself, she selflessly squared the ball for Salma Paralluelo, who ended the evening with two goals of her own. The second, a fierce strike with her left foot, may have been the finest moment of the final. Even so, the night’s main story belonged to Pajor.

Two goals, an assist, the Player of the Match award, and her eleventh goal of this season’s Champions League campaign, which secured her the competition’s Golden Boot. 

In sport, we often speak about “losing finalists” as though repeated defeats reveal something about a player’s mentality or inability to handle pressure. But reaching six Champions League finals is not failure. For years, Pajor was simply missing the moment that would allow the story to end differently.

In Oslo, she finally got it. And perhaps that is why her celebrations after the final whistle did not feel like an explosion of euphoria. More like relief. Like the moment something that had rested on her shoulders for nearly a decade finally slipped away. Sixth final. Finally hers.