Thirty minutes into Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final first leg between Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund, the Olympic Stadium’s scoreboard showed a statistic that the home team had completed 225 passes against 69 from Dortmund.
Barcelona’s constant unified pressing and their persistent forward passing helped bring about a 4-0 win with one of their best performances of the season. It’s becoming a trend.
A decade after Luis Enrique led Barcelona to their last Champions League title, and half a decade since they last reached the semi-final stage, Barcelona are clear favourites to make the last four after demolishing Dortmund.
The visitors were missing senior players Marcel Sabitzer, Pascal Gross and Nico Schlotterback, and they’ll have a raucous 81,000 crowd behind them for next week’s second leg, but it would be the surprise of the season if they overcame a four-goal deficit.
Hansi Flick’s side assaulted the Dortmund goal from the first minute, with Lamine Yamal almost scoring twice in the first 10 minutes.
Barcelona have a mixture of youth and experience and Flick has brought the most exciting football to the city in the post-Lionel Messi era.
They’re unbeaten in 2025, have already won the Spanish Super Cup, face Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey final, lead La Liga by four points, and are advancing in Europe after four below par seasons in continental competition.
They could lift a quadruple and return to Camp Nou in what could be an epic 2025 - but Flick keeps his players in check in a way in which Dortmund struggled to.
The contrast between Yamal, 17, and Robert Lewandowski, 36, delights and occasionally frustrates. The Pole pleaded for the ball from the youngster early in the game, and while Yamal’s decision-making often belies his years, he’s still got much to learn, and Flick was often in his ear with intense instructions. Both would eventually be among the goals.
Lewandowski left Dortmund in 2014 and had played against his former team 28 times since. On Wednesday he scored his 28th and 29th goals in those games. The stats are staggering at either end of the career spectrum. At 17 years and 270 days, Yamal became the first player under the age of 18 to make 20 Champions League appearances.
Dortmund, finalists against Real Madrid last year, have suffered this season. Eighth in the Bundesliga, they were underdogs against a team who’d already defeated them 3-2 at home in a wild October group game. Barcelona have learnt from then, their defence is less leaky and they dominated the early exchanges, yet Dortmund, backed by a vocal 3,000 following among the 49,760 crowd, had two excellent first-half chances from Serhou Guirassy.
By that time, home captain Raphinha had given the Catalans the one-goal lead they’d take into the break as he touched a ball that was already going in, preventing Pau Cubarsi from earning a first ever Champions League goal.
Raphinha, who apologised to Cubarsi, has scored a ridiculous 12 goals in 11 Champions League games this season. The Raphinha, Lewandowski, Yamal forward trident is sublime.
Yamal got his side’s fourth after 77 minutes, prodding past Gregor Kobel with the type of instinct Lewandowski had earlier shown when he swept the third goal in. It was Lamal’s 14th of the season, Lewandowski now has 40.
“I play with teammates of such a high level here, it makes things a joy,” said Raphinha “We all know each other well and that relationship level helps us as a team. Our stats are spectacular this season and I just hope that continues.”
Barcelona are having so much fun, but it’s not only about their front players. Frenkie de Jong is back in the team and, alongside Pedri, helping them dominate and control. Right back Jules Kounde marauds into the midfield.
"We’re not through yet,” said Flick after the game. “Winning by this many goals is important and, when a team plays as well as that, goals normally do flow. We aren’t thinking we are through because you simply never know what might happen. Football is madness. We’ll be determined to play like this again next week.”
“Dortmund are a good team so we are already aware that we need to travel over there and commit as few errors as possible. Our three guys up front are terrific and very important but so is our defence. And our guys who come off the bench and somehow manage to hit the same performance level as the players they replace.”
It’s daunting for Dortmund. “We need to defend together,” said their coach Niko Kovac after the game. “We face Bayern [on Saturday] and they’re at a similar level to Barcelona. All in all, over our next two games we need to position ourselves much better defensively. If we don’t do that with intensity against a team like this, who have more than one world-class player, then it’s too difficult.”
