It was a world record for a club match in women’s football as a crowd of 60,739 turned out to watch Atletico Madrid take on Barcelona in the Spanish capital.
The top-of-the-table clash was played in Atletico men’s team’s Wanda Metropolitano instead of the women’s much smaller home stadium which has a capacity of 3,500.
The attendance shattered the previous European record of 48,121 who watched Athletic Bilbao’s women’s team play Atletico in a Copa del Rey match in Bilbao in January.
“The players are the reason for all the success,” Atletico coach José Luis Sánchez Vera told El Pais before the game.
“They are the ones who have connected with the fans and they are the ones who are going to fill this stadium with Atléticos.
“The match will be a party for all of them and for those who don’t know our players, I think they’re going to be hooked.”
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Atletico captain Amanda Sampedro added: “I was sure that the fans would respond this way, they’re like that, they’ve shown us that for a long time and it’s for those people that we will leave everything on the pitch.”
However, Barca won 2-0 to close the gap to three points at the top as Asisat Oshoala scored the opener for her fifth goal in five games, and England international Toni Duggan came off the bench to add a second.
The record for any women’s match was set at the 1999 World Cup final when 90,185 people watched the United States beat China 5-4 on penalties at the Rose Bowl.
Another bumper crowd of 80, 203 saw the United States defeat Japan 2-1 to win gold at the 2012 Olympics in London.
The record for the Atletico men’s team at the Wanda Stadium is the 67, 804 people who watched the Madrid derby against Real in February.
The highest attendance ever at a football match was the 173,850 paying spectators who attended fhe 1950 World Cup final between Brazil and Uruguay at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, according to the Guinness World Records.