Xavi Hernandez is fond of calling the result an impostor in football but sometimes it is the ultimate truth and this was one of those times.
Barcelona’s semi-final exits at the hands of Internazionale in 2010 and Chelsea in 2012 could be explained as partly coincidental, treated as a natural consequence of competition: football is a sport and in sport you can lose. Their 7-0 aggregate defeat against Bayern Munich is a different matter altogether.
This time Barcelona were taken to pieces and there was something humiliating in the way they abdicated, incapable even of competing. There may never have been a more one-sided European Cup semi-final.
Nor is it just about the semi-final. The Catalan sports paper El Mundo Deportivo opened on "Great Bayern", and that is true. Juup Heynckes's side have been virtually flawless this season. Yet Barcelona have been complicit in their demise.
In part, this defeat was the chronicle of a death foretold. Elimination was coming, even if the nature of it was less predictable. Barca reached a unique sixth semi-final in a row but have not played well in this season’s competition.
Against Milan they were superb but it is legitimate to ask how good the Italian side are when they trail Juventus by 18 points in Serie A.
Unfortunate in Paris
The 4-0 victory over Milan was a glimpse of the Barcelona of recent years, but it is their sole victory in their last seven Champions League games. They won none of their last four, although they were perhaps unfortunate in Paris, and did not score against Bayern.
They were beaten by Celtic in Glasgow and only defeated the Hoops 2-1 at the Camp Nou thanks to a 94th-minute goal from Jordi Alba.
Leo Messi’s performances have disguised Barcelona’s, but this time he was sitting on the bench. As one headline put it: “Without God, there is no miracle.”
When the final whistle went on the semi-final, most of Barcelona’s players trudged dejectedly from the field until the club’s delegate, Carlos Naval, waved them back out to applaud the fans.
Gerard Pique was standing at the side of the pitch, giving a post-match interview. “We have to improve. We will have to take decisions, including maybe some incorporations,” he said.
A few moments later the president Sandro Rosell was interviewed. “I’m not sure what Pique is referring to,” he said. “Any evaluations will be done at the end of the season.” In fact, that process has already begun.
“We reached the semi-final of the cup, the semi-final of the Champions League and looking at La Liga, I would quite like to have an ‘end of an era’ like this every year,” Pique said.
But the league has lost some of its lustre; Europe is where Spain’s big teams judge themselves and the results there broker little argument. There are mitigating circumstances to explain Barcelona’s collapse. Put in uncomfortably blunt terms, their coach had cancer for a start. Eric Abidal is returning from a liver transplant. And it was not just Lionel Messi absent from the starting XI: Carles Puyol, Javier Mascherano, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba were also out. Barcelona, admitting Xavi and Dani Alves, were “justito” – running on empty.
“I am sure that if we had been at 100 per cent we would have competed better,” Vilanova said. “We do not need new players; we need to recover the ones we have got.”
Vilanova insisted that they had protected their players as best they could but, for example, Messi’s astonishing goalscoring record in the league rings a little hollow now: he has played virtually every game and taken almost total responsibility, something that poses a tactical and physical problem.
Perhaps rest would have been advisable. Messi has eight Champions League goals, the next highest scorer is Jordi Alba with two. That dependency is always risky; here, Barcelona paid for it.
"There's no need to be drastic: the team has a future," Xavi said. However, this is a test of Barcelona's resolve: if they really do believe in their philosophy, this is when they have to prove it.
Guardian Service
