The collapse of FC Barcelona on the European scene is confirmed. Unable to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League, and therefore returned to the Europa League for the second consecutive season, Barça has even already left C3 in the round of 16 of the competition. Released to everyone’s surprise by Eintracht Frankfurt in the quarterfinals last year (1-1; 2-3), Xavi’s players certainly had the misfortune this time of falling in the play-off against Manchester United.
This clash between two supposed European monsters turned to the advantage of the Red Devils, winners (2-1) at Old Trafford on Thursday after being led to the score for about thirty minutes of play, following the penalty from Lewandowski (0 -1, 18th). This reversal of the situation falls particularly badly, in a period when the club is already splashed by a huge scandal of arbitration corruption. Asked on Twitch Thursday evening after the meeting, Gerard Pique let go, annoyed, “It’s a fucking ruin”.
“Another nightmare to the collection”
The former club defender, who retired from sport at the beginning of November, is not the only one to knock out this Barça, all the same still leader of La Liga with eight points ahead of Real Madrid. The Catalan daily Sport for example headlined this Friday on “Old Trafford, another nightmare in the collection”, slipping among his tackles “Europe has put them back in their place today”.
“The Theater of Dreams has put an end to the triumphal march of a Barça as bad in the Champions League as in the Europa League”, estimates for its part the newspaper El País, just as bitter. More measured, Xavi concluded at a press conference: “We were better than last season in Europe. We played against big teams but we didn’t measure up. We will come back stronger, after having done our self-criticism”. Finally, if strong sporting sanctions have not punished Barça by then in the context of the Enriquez Negreira affair.