We thought it couldn't get worse than losing 7-0 on aggregate to Bayern Munich, but that time Lionel Messi was injured throughout. We thought it couldn't get worse than losing 3-0 to Juventus and drawing blankly into the Camp Nou night in 2017, the same year Real Madrid took their domestic supremacy away.
We definitely thought the worst it would ever get is in 2018, when Roma of all teams, nowhere near the Seria A title race, won 3-0, winning the tie 4-4 on away goals, beating them on an unholy night in Rome, the third straight year Barcelona would fail to make the Semifinals.
No, no, and no. There is a new worst, and it may never get worst-er. Barcelona just lost 4-0 to Liverpool, missing two of their four best players (and two of their primary offensive forces), losing the tie 3-4. Yes, this is about Liverpool's incredible resolve, the continuation of Jurgen Klopp's mastery of this particular tournament (at least as much someone who has never won it). But it is very much about Barcelona's continuation to suffer incredible defeats in this most incredible tournament in increasingly incredible ways.
Some of this is also the realization that it is damn hard to win this trophy. The same luck that takes to win it, makes sure you don't win it - making Real Madrid's incredible three-peat more and more sensational of a result. Barcelona has won this tournament as recently as 2015. They've also suffered some of the greatest defeats in the years surrounding that win - none more so when they set foot in Liverpool, in a stadium right up their with the Camp Nou and the Bernabeu and the San Siro of having so many ridiculous Champions League moments.
Anfield rocked like I hadn't heard it in eons (or maybe last year when they thrashed Manchester City by the same score...). That stadium regained its place as a true cathedral of the sport, getting there by jutting away the sports most domineering power.
What Barcelona has not been able to do away from its cavernous Camp Nou in recent years is staggering. Their knockout results in away legs are a series of pathetic performances lopped on top of one another, this going right up there with the 3-0 humiliation in Rome, or the 4-0 loss in Paris (which, yes, they turned around) or the flaccid 3-0 in Turin, or on and on and on. The team goes to shit, Messi goes quiet - his road goalscoring record shockingly meager in knockout legs.
It's also the realization that after years of Spanish Reign (the run of five straight CL titles will come to an end), the best league in the world is once again the Premier League, which should could give us an all-English final for the first time in eleven years. Liverpool is a better team than Barcelona. No, the version without Salah or Firminho is not - which contributes to the ridiculousness of the result - but the healthy team - the one that lost the first leg 3-0, is better. Their season in England is insane - and it says more about the depth of the league than anything else that Man City may still win.
A few years back, when Klopp took over Liverpool, joining Guardiola at Man City, and Mourinho and Man U (oops), and Pochettino at Tottenham, and Conte at Chelsea (oops again), the EPL was given its greates set of quality managers since the 'Big-4' era of Sir Alex, Wenger, Mou and Rafa. This was supposed to user in a new era of Enlgish domestic dominance, and despite the inconsistencies of Man U and Chelsea, it more or less has.
In the end, we can leave making all the same jokes at Barcelona, but watching them throw away a chance at another UCL title was almost depressingly evil. In the past when they let UCL's slip away, they at least controlled possession and could trick many watchers into calling them 'unlucky' and what-not. It seemed like a true revelation when they lost - such as when Mourinho sprinted across the field when Inter beat them in 2010, or the still ridiculousness of Chelsea's miracle 2-2 draw in 2012. But slowly it morphed into teams just beating them, and while last year was a true shock (and again given the people NOT playing in Liverpool this year), this can join the Juventus loss in 2017, and the pair of losses to Atletico Madrid in 2014 and 2016 in times when Barcelona just looked second best.
Ernesto Valverde's Barcelona can play comfortably now without the ball, but seeing them barely get 50% of the possession in the first leg was jarring, even when they escaped with a 3-0 win. This is a different Barcelona, but if anything, they have the same poor (for them) results in the Champions League.
When Real Madrid won its third straight last year, despite having a dreadful (for them) domestic campaign, we hailed them as kind of lucky, and certainly they were. They escaped Juventus in the Quarterfinals 4-3 with a penalty in the 90th minute of the second leg. They escaped Bayern, again 4-3, with Muller barely missing a goal at the death that would ahve given Bayern the tie. They got two howlers in the final. But do you know what that Madrid team did? They won three road legs in the knockout stage, the first team to do that. They won 3-1 in Paris. They won 3-0 in Turin. They won 2-1 in Munich. They were the first team ever to win three straight road legs - something even the prime Guardiola era Barcelona teams did not manage.
The year before, they won two of the road legs, before losing their road leg to Atletico 2-1, after winning the first leg 3-0 in the Bernabeu. The best aspect of Zidane's run was their ability to never have a truly bad game, to never get blasted, and to play well away from Madrid. The most important aspect of any Champions League run is to get decent results away - something Barcelona has become uniquely incapable of doing.
I may be being unfair to Barcelona, who still have won three Champions Leagues in the Messi Era (can we stop giving him credit for 2006 when he barely played, btw?). But only one since 2012, with the losses in that period being of such harrowing variety. What's startling is in their now seven losses since 2012, they've lost their seven road legs by a combined 0-17; that is not a typo. Their play in the Camp Nou is as peerless as any result ever, but it is shocking how terrible they have been away from their home. To win Europe, you have to conquer foreign stadiums, and it warms my heart how terrible they've been at doing that, year after increasingly incredible year.
We definitely thought the worst it would ever get is in 2018, when Roma of all teams, nowhere near the Seria A title race, won 3-0, winning the tie 4-4 on away goals, beating them on an unholy night in Rome, the third straight year Barcelona would fail to make the Semifinals.
No, no, and no. There is a new worst, and it may never get worst-er. Barcelona just lost 4-0 to Liverpool, missing two of their four best players (and two of their primary offensive forces), losing the tie 3-4. Yes, this is about Liverpool's incredible resolve, the continuation of Jurgen Klopp's mastery of this particular tournament (at least as much someone who has never won it). But it is very much about Barcelona's continuation to suffer incredible defeats in this most incredible tournament in increasingly incredible ways.
Some of this is also the realization that it is damn hard to win this trophy. The same luck that takes to win it, makes sure you don't win it - making Real Madrid's incredible three-peat more and more sensational of a result. Barcelona has won this tournament as recently as 2015. They've also suffered some of the greatest defeats in the years surrounding that win - none more so when they set foot in Liverpool, in a stadium right up their with the Camp Nou and the Bernabeu and the San Siro of having so many ridiculous Champions League moments.
Anfield rocked like I hadn't heard it in eons (or maybe last year when they thrashed Manchester City by the same score...). That stadium regained its place as a true cathedral of the sport, getting there by jutting away the sports most domineering power.
What Barcelona has not been able to do away from its cavernous Camp Nou in recent years is staggering. Their knockout results in away legs are a series of pathetic performances lopped on top of one another, this going right up there with the 3-0 humiliation in Rome, or the 4-0 loss in Paris (which, yes, they turned around) or the flaccid 3-0 in Turin, or on and on and on. The team goes to shit, Messi goes quiet - his road goalscoring record shockingly meager in knockout legs.
It's also the realization that after years of Spanish Reign (the run of five straight CL titles will come to an end), the best league in the world is once again the Premier League, which should could give us an all-English final for the first time in eleven years. Liverpool is a better team than Barcelona. No, the version without Salah or Firminho is not - which contributes to the ridiculousness of the result - but the healthy team - the one that lost the first leg 3-0, is better. Their season in England is insane - and it says more about the depth of the league than anything else that Man City may still win.
A few years back, when Klopp took over Liverpool, joining Guardiola at Man City, and Mourinho and Man U (oops), and Pochettino at Tottenham, and Conte at Chelsea (oops again), the EPL was given its greates set of quality managers since the 'Big-4' era of Sir Alex, Wenger, Mou and Rafa. This was supposed to user in a new era of Enlgish domestic dominance, and despite the inconsistencies of Man U and Chelsea, it more or less has.
In the end, we can leave making all the same jokes at Barcelona, but watching them throw away a chance at another UCL title was almost depressingly evil. In the past when they let UCL's slip away, they at least controlled possession and could trick many watchers into calling them 'unlucky' and what-not. It seemed like a true revelation when they lost - such as when Mourinho sprinted across the field when Inter beat them in 2010, or the still ridiculousness of Chelsea's miracle 2-2 draw in 2012. But slowly it morphed into teams just beating them, and while last year was a true shock (and again given the people NOT playing in Liverpool this year), this can join the Juventus loss in 2017, and the pair of losses to Atletico Madrid in 2014 and 2016 in times when Barcelona just looked second best.
Ernesto Valverde's Barcelona can play comfortably now without the ball, but seeing them barely get 50% of the possession in the first leg was jarring, even when they escaped with a 3-0 win. This is a different Barcelona, but if anything, they have the same poor (for them) results in the Champions League.
When Real Madrid won its third straight last year, despite having a dreadful (for them) domestic campaign, we hailed them as kind of lucky, and certainly they were. They escaped Juventus in the Quarterfinals 4-3 with a penalty in the 90th minute of the second leg. They escaped Bayern, again 4-3, with Muller barely missing a goal at the death that would ahve given Bayern the tie. They got two howlers in the final. But do you know what that Madrid team did? They won three road legs in the knockout stage, the first team to do that. They won 3-1 in Paris. They won 3-0 in Turin. They won 2-1 in Munich. They were the first team ever to win three straight road legs - something even the prime Guardiola era Barcelona teams did not manage.
The year before, they won two of the road legs, before losing their road leg to Atletico 2-1, after winning the first leg 3-0 in the Bernabeu. The best aspect of Zidane's run was their ability to never have a truly bad game, to never get blasted, and to play well away from Madrid. The most important aspect of any Champions League run is to get decent results away - something Barcelona has become uniquely incapable of doing.
I may be being unfair to Barcelona, who still have won three Champions Leagues in the Messi Era (can we stop giving him credit for 2006 when he barely played, btw?). But only one since 2012, with the losses in that period being of such harrowing variety. What's startling is in their now seven losses since 2012, they've lost their seven road legs by a combined 0-17; that is not a typo. Their play in the Camp Nou is as peerless as any result ever, but it is shocking how terrible they have been away from their home. To win Europe, you have to conquer foreign stadiums, and it warms my heart how terrible they've been at doing that, year after increasingly incredible year.
