Lionel Messi’s hand met his face. His Barcelona teammate Philippe Coutinho had just scored Bayern Munich’s eighth goal in the quarter-final of the Champions League against his parent club. Eighth goal. There was no hiding. The final nail in Barcelona’s coffin. The goal that signified the end of an era and confirmed the demise of Blaugrana.
The 2019/20 season saw the stitches holding the club together rip away, exposing everything that contributed to the club’s malfunction – on the surface and beyond.
In their last two matches before the lockdown of La Liga, white flags were waved in opposition to chairman Josep Bartomeu; neither Ernesto Valverde or Quique Setien were enough; the team earned no silverware and perhaps the most significant of the long list of problems, La Pulga wants out.
Although Barca finished the season just five points behind biggest rivals Real Madrid and sat a comfortable 12 points ahead of Atletico Madrid in third, coming second in La Liga is no achievement for the Catalonian giants.
Valverde’s men were just 11 games in by the time they had managed to wrack up as many losses as they had in the entire 2018/19 season and Setien’s arrival in January changed nothing.
In typical fashion, Barca advanced to the quarter-final of the Copa del Rey with a dominant 5-0 win over Leganes, but despite the club’s history in this competition having won the cup 30 times, failure was seemingly inescapable.
Victory over the team they lost to in their opening game of the season would place the club in a familiar setting: the semi-final of La Copa. However, their second defeat at the hands of Athletic Club saw their chances of winning a trophy begin to dwindle.
A 3-2 loss to Atletico Madrid made the Supercopa de Espana the second trophy of the season that Barca handed over to subsequent winners Real Madrid, meaning the Champions League was a last-gasp attempt at redemption.
After throwing away a 4-1 win at Camp Nou to lose 3-0 in Rome in the 2018 Champions League quarter-final, Messi vowed that this could not happen again. The Argentine warned in his last words before stepping out onto the Anfield grass a year later: “Let’s remember: Rome was our fault, no one else’s. Don’t let the same thing happen.”
Many believed that a 3-0 lead made the final inevitable, there wasn’t a chance that the horror of Rome would repeat itself, but Divock Origi re-wrote the narrative by scoring his team’s fourth goal to break Blaugrana.
Bayern Munich 2020 didn’t follow a pattern; it was incomparable. The Bundesliga winners were ruthless and posed a solid argument for why the masses believe they are currently the best team in the world, but even so… this was Barcelona – mes que un club.
The fate of Setien’s men and reputation of the footballing giants lay in the hands of Coutinho. A player whose experience at the club divulges all that is wrong. Their wasted, most expensive player assisted Bayern’s sixth goal and scored their seventh and eighth dropping Barca to rock bottom.
The concept that anything can happen in the Champions League was elevated to a new level as millions watched the 8-2 thrashing of Barcelona in Lisbon, the club’s worst defeat for almost 80 years. It’s a game that will never be forgotten.
“It’s a shame, I can’t say anything else. It’s not the first or second time. The club needs changes of all kinds. If I have to leave for new blood to come, I will leave,” said an emotional Gerard Pique after the game. Words of a player that is desperate for improvement.
Bartomeu called an emergency board meeting with the outcome bringing forward the club’s presidential elections from next summer to March 2021, with the Catalonian native unable to stand having already served two terms in charge.
Currently still at the helm, the chairman appointed former player Ronald Koeman for his dream job as head coach of Barcelona. He faces not only a huge rebuilding job, but boosting the morale of an outraged fanbase.
And yet, the fear of Messi leaving his beloved Barcelona only grows. Sending a fax to the club on Tuesday wishing to exercise a clause in his contract allowing him to leave for free immediately, La Pulga confirms his desire for something new.