FC Barcelona has achieved on Tuesday a long -awaited passes to the semifinals of the Champions League, penultimate round of a tournament that the ‘culrs’ did not step on since 2019 during the painful elimination in Anfield and the one that now arrives after a journey of more bad experiences, which includes two elimination in the group stage.
Barça is still far from being able to recover the European prestige that was won at the times of Pep Guardiola or Luis Enrique Martínez, but his victory in the global score of the quarterfinals against Borussia Dortmund, which is still the current runner -up, puts the Blaugrana box in very semifinals celebrated in Barcelona.
By play style, with quality outbreaks that increasingly emerge, also for cohesion in the group of players and coaching staff and the union with a hobby of newly excited, this Barça seems to go on the right way. He is still alive in the Copa del Rey, already in the final against Real Madrid, and leads LaLiga Ea Sports, but it is in the ‘Champions League’ where dreams are deposited.
Since 2015, in Berlin, Barça is not able to win a ‘Champions’ that he had previously won in 2009 and 2011. But that thinking that was chosen almost every year, won or not, vanished in 2016, when the defense of the title ended precipitously in the quarterfinals, in a Spanish crossroads against Atlético de Madrid.
And after three losses in a row, the 2018/19 season arrived and the team then trained by Ernesto Valverde was planted in ‘Semis’ to, against Liverpool, win 3-0 at the Camp Nou and put back enough joy. In addition, the team came from fitting a hard elimination the previous year at the hands of AS Roma, after falling on the return in the 3-0 Olympic and wasting the 4-1 of the first leg in Barcelona.
But he did not learn from that mistake a Barça who, with a child action by not defending a corner that Liverpool took quickly with ingenuity, saw how the ‘reds’ of Jürgen Klopp swept them from Anfield (4-0). It was the hecatombe for the Barça de los Leo Messi, Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets, Arturo Vidal, Coutinho and company. It was the finding that Barça was no longer that team capable of marveling and winning anyone.
So that stumbling block, partly led by a clamorous error of Ousmane Dembélé on a door almost empty at the pass of Messi in the 3-0 of the first leg that could well be a 4-0, gave rise to a few hopes, of more shadows than lights. And with bulky defeats of those who still hurt the ‘Culer’ fan, such as 2-8 in Covid-19 times against Bayern Munich who then trained the now Blaugrana Hansi Flick coach.
A win, a look painted, which did not improve in the 2020/21 campaign because the PSG of Mauricio Pochettino and Kylian Mbappé, author of a ‘hat-trick’, won 1-4 at Camp Nou to confirm in Paris (1-1) its triumph in the round of 16. Can something worse than falling into the eighth? Yes, not directly get into the tie, as happened in the next two editions in which Barça was eliminated in the group stage.
Last campaign, with Xavi Hernández on the bench, the team could overcome that psychological wall and remain alive after a group stage in which he was leader ahead of Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk and Royal Antwerp. This time, in the round of 16, the team surpassed Naples well with a draw at Diego Armando Maradona (1-1) and a clear victory at home (3-1) with goals from Robert Lewandowski, Fermín López and João Cancelo.
But in the rooms, again against Paris Saint-Germain, this time already led by former Blaugrana Luis Enrique Martínez, Barça was excited ahead of time when he won 2-3 in the first leg played in the Park of the Princes. And more when Raphinha advanced the ‘Culers’ in the return, but of that partial global of 4-2 for those of Xavi, he went to cruel elimination, with an expulsion from Ronald Araujo that facilitated the comeback to the PSG of Ousmane Dembélé and Kylian Mbappé.
With Flick the wind seems to blow in favor, facing the bow towards the port of the final in the Allianz Arena de Munich, which must previously go through Milan or, precisely, the city of Bavara. Not surprisingly, the adversary of this Barça in ‘Semis’, its first in six years, will be Inter or Bayern; Whoever is, hard pitfall for the rebuild Barca club.