Time to update the Barcelona roll of dishonour. There have been bad, painful nights before in Europe, but none with the concentrated humiliation of Lisbon.
The eight goals Barca conceded to Bayern Munich broke a club record stretching back into the first half of the last century.
But perhaps the most ominous part is that the captain, Lionel Messi, had been warning all season that in Europe, Barcelona would sooner or later be out of their depth. While falling 8-2 to a confident, strident Bayern Munich is a startling scoreline, this was a humbling reached via a stairway of steady decline.
Paris, 2017, Champions League last-16: Paris Saint-Germain 4, Barcelona 0. Miraculously, Barcelona recovered in the second leg to go through, whereupon they promptly lost 3-0 at Juventus. Rome, 2018, quarter-final: Roma 3, Barcelona 0. Anfield, 2019 semi-final: Liverpool 4, Barcelona 0. These pummelings are habitual. Bayern's was just a good deal heavier than the others.
"This is not the first, the second or the third time this has happened to us," said Gerard Pique, the long-serving defender. "Weak" is how Messi described his team only last month, after another capitulation, Barca's discarding the leadership of La Liga over the last nine games of the season leaving Real Madrid as Spain's champions.
Messi had already told the club’s directors this Barca were not in shape to compete in the later stages of the Champions League. He said the same to Quique Setien, appointed as manager in January, soon after Setien had started.
Setien’s tenure will be remembered above all for the dark night at the Estadio da Luz, the 8-2, and the search for a new head coach has already begun.
“Some decisions need to be taken, some already have been taken,” said the club president Josep Maria Bartomeu after overseeing the club’s heaviest loss ever over 90 minutes in Europe.
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Barca-Bayern player ratings
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BARCELONA RATINGS: Marc-Andre ter Stegen - 3: A bad night for the goalkeeper who believes he, and not Bayern’s Neuer, should be Germany’s No 1. Besides the goals conceded, his passing, a supposed forte, was very poor. Getty -
Nelson Semedo - 4: The right back charged with policing Bayern’s Davies and Perisic was always in for a tough night. Semedo had his moments going forward but too few of them. Reuters -
Gerard Pique - 3: A career low for this serial champion. Poorly positioned again and again, flailing against the expert crossing of Bayern, and evidently fatigued. AFP -
Clement Lenglet - 3: A harsh reverse for the surprise protagonist of last weekend’s last-16 win over Napoli. Lenglet won his key aerial battle then; he lost too many battles against Bayern. EPA -
Jordi Alba - 5: Once upon a time, he was Lionel Messi’s most reliable ally, a firefly down the left flank. Two cameos, in the lead up to Barca’s goals, reminded of those days. The rest? Forgettable. Getty -
Sergi Roberto - 3: Gave away the ball in the build-up to Bayern’s second goal and, selected to galvanise midfield, seldom imposed himself on it before being substituted at half time. AFP -
Sergio Busquets - 3: The most obvious emblem of Barcelona’s decline may be Busquets. Outpressed, slow to the tackle, unable to ever set the tempo, a horrible night for a great champion. EPA -
Frenkie de Jong - 4: One lovely through-ball recalled why Barcelona signed him. His slack marking for Joshua Kimmich’s goal pointed to how far short he is of being the complete midfielder. EPA -
Arturo Vidal - 3: Vidal came to Barcelona, via Bayern and Juventus, for his trophy-winning knack and his warrior credentials. Some knacks just run out. Ineffective against Bayern. EPA -
Lionel Messi - 4: Messi may never have been so dwarfed by a scoreline, so embarrassed as a captain. And he gave the ball away for Bayern’s seventh. PA -
Luis Suarez - 5: A brilliant goal, though it came too late to change the tide. And for much of the first half Suarez was unusually marginal, outpaced when it mattered. EPA -
Substitutes: Antoine Griezmann - 3: It’s enough of a statement that last summer’s €120m signing, fully fit, started only on the bench. A deflating year for Griezmann got worse against Bayern. Little impact. EPA -
Ansu Fati - 4: The teenager, on as a substitute, offered fresh options from wide, although the cause was lost by then. He will see better days as a Barca player. AFP -
Coach: Quique Setien - 2: Appointed in January, this coach of noble theories has been a practical disaster. Whatever he conceived as the answer to a formidable Bayern, it failed horribly. Reuters -
BAYERN MUNICH RATINGS: Manuel Neuer - 7: Happily placed with his side three goals up after just over half an hour. But he will also know his marshalling of his defence was sometimes imperfect. AFP -
Joshua Kimmich - 8: As talented as a full-back as he is in central midfield, Kimmich was in his less favoured right-back role and still shone, setting up one goal, scoring another. AP -
Jerome Boateng - 6: He has had better nights, personally, but worse nights against Barcelona - the semi-final in 2015 for instance - and his errors in Lisbon will be forgotten. Reuters -
David Alaba - 7: His hapless own goal - Barcelona’s equaliser - summed up a wild, haphazard start, though Alaba’s pace at his new position of centre-back would prove vital later. EPA -
Alphonso Davies - 8: One of the discoveries of the season, Davies, the winger turned left back, rose to the occasion to set up, via an impudent run and cross, Bayern’s fifth goal. AFP -
Thiago - 8: A big night for the former Barcelona midfielder, and a surprising one for a man who remembers Barca as a club who normally value keeping the ball. He was commanding. Reuters -
Leon Goretzka - 9: Authoritative, as he has been in Bayern’s march to their domestic triumphs, in the central midfield role he now governs in all its aspects. AP -
Serge Gnabry - 8: Understated, hard-working, imaginative. He has had a terrific season, full of zest, generosity and a poise in his finishing that was epitomised in Bayern’s third goal. AFP -
Thomas Muller - 9: A vintage Muller display - moments when he looked inelegant; many moments when he was in the right place at the right time. And, once again, he thrived on the big stage. Reuters -
Ivan Perisic - 8: Scored perhaps the most important goal, the well-taken second, to put Bayern 2-1 in front after a helter-skelter start. A constant menace. AFP -
Robert Lewandowski - 8: His standards are so high that it now looks like a poor night for the Pole when a Bayern match goes 82 minutes without a Lewandowski goal. He got his eventually. EPA -
Substitutes: Kingsley Coman - 7: It was a reminder of Bayern’s great strength from the wings when he came on and kept up the level of threat. PA -
Philippe Coutinho - 8: Administered the ultimate humiliation with his two late goals against the club who have loaned him to Bayern, and reminded the world of his delicate talents. AFP -
Niklas Suele - NA. Too late to make an impression. AP -
Corentin Tolisso - NA. Too late to make an impression. AP -
Lucas Hernandez - NA. Too late to make an impression. -
Coach: Hansi Flick - 8: The opening, chaotic, first quarter-hour made Flick, in only his sixth ever Champions League match, look like a novice. The scoreline makes him a hero. PA
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Bartomeu, whose mandate expires next year but who would like an ally elected as president when the club’s season-ticket holders go to the polls sometime before mid-2021, can scarcely argue that his presidency has been a success over the past 12 months.
When Setien replaced the sacked Ernesto Valverde, who had guided Barcelona to successive Liga titles, Barcelona were top of the table. Setien, 61, was no better than third choice either. Former captain Xavi, who is coaching Al-Sadd in Qatar, and Ronald Koeman, in charge of Holland, had turned Bartomeu down.
Xavi's candidacy is now back on the agenda. His undisguised ambition is to one day manage Barcelona, where he spent most of his playing career. But he has strong misgivings about doing so under the current board.
He is close to senior figures in the dressing-room and knows how soured the relationship between players and directors has become. Pique signalled it in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s trampling: “The club needs change, and I’m not just talking about coaches and players, but something far more structural.”
A majority of senior players would welcome presidential elections as soon as possible. A would-be president carrying the promise of Xavi as the new coach would be a strong contender.
More experienced, successful managers are available, and inevitably Mauricio Pochettino, sacked by Tottenham Hotspur a few months after he led them to last season’s Champions League final, has been considered by Bartomeu.
One snag, particularly for a board seeking to wrestle back some of their diminishing popularity ahead of elections, is Pochettino’s past association with Barcelona’s city rivals, Espanyol. When the Argentinian coached Espanyol, where he also played, he stoked the enmity between the clubs with pointed criticism of Barca.
But no coach can look at Barcelona, the club with the highest player-wage bill in the sport and see a fast route back to the status they had in the years between 2009 and 2015, when they won the European title three times.
The standard-bearers are ageing: Messi, whose contract is up for renewal next June, Pique and Luis Suarez are 33, Sergio Busquets 32 and Jordi Alba 31. “If new blood is what’s needed, I’ll be the first to offer to move on,” said Pique.
But if the so-called new blood is not to come from within – from a once-fabled La Masia academy that nourished Messi, Pique, Busquets, Alba, but now seems to produce less concentrated crops of world-class talents – it will have to be bought. The misguided, extravagant spending of the last three years means the club treasury is low on funds.
The line-up of substitutes in Lisbon told its own damning story of where Barcelona have gone wrong, and misspent.
Among those shy of the first XI were Antoine Griezmann, last summer’s €120m (Dh521m) recruit and Ousmane Dembele, who cost over €100m in 2017. Among Bayern’s substitutes was Philippe Coutinho, whom Barcelona bought for around €150m in 2018, loaning him to the German champions 18 months later to relieve the wage bill.
Coutinho came on and scored goals number seven and eight in Lisbon. This time next week, he might well be preparing for a Champions League final, after which Bayern will immediately terminate his loan.
Barca can then start calculating how enormous a loss they are ready to accept in their urgency to sell a player who is now not only a symbol of their bad business strategy, but a co-contributor to the worst night almost anybody at the club can ever recall.
