Dribble, 16.4/video editing: Ziv Steiner
42 times Barcelona won away from home in the first leg of the knockout stage in Europe. Until evening (Tuesday) she only failed to pass twice - the last of which was somewhere in 1984, but now it happened to her again. The Spanish champion showed up for the Champions League quarter-final second leg against Paris Saint-Germain in Montjuic after the great 2:3 from the first game in the City of Lights, but completely collapsed.
The opening was perfect: Lamin Yamal scored for Rafinia (12) who made it 2:4 in the summary of the games, and the road to the semi-finals for the first time since 2019 seemed paved. But then everything fell apart. Ronald Araujo was sent off (29), Luis Enrique's team took control of the game, ex-Haks Osman Dembele (40) and Vitinia (54) completed a turnaround, and in the second half Kylian Mbappe made sure to close the deal with a typical pair on the way to 1:4. Some of the Barcelona players were seen crying on the grass at the end, after another European failure.
"Barcelona returns to the grave. Another black European night for Barcelona," wrote AS, while the main headline in Marca read: "The nightmare in the Champions League continues." In the Catalan "Sport" they added: "Paris Saint-Germain woke Barcelona from the European dream."
Xavi claimed that Araujo's suspension decided the match: "It's a great shame, our path in the Champions League ended because of a refereeing error. I told him it was a disaster. This is the reality. Everything we worked for an entire season was destroyed by a refereeing error. At 11 against 11 We were well organized. I'm frustrated and angry. There's no point in talking about the game, the referee ruined everything."
The coach added: "We hesitated about the substitution, we wanted control in the center of the pitch, so we chose Lamin. It doesn't matter what we say, the suspension changed everything. We had opportunities later, which is a great shame. Barcelona will try their luck again, we had a very worthy path in the Champions League this season ".
"Obviously the suspension had an effect, without it it's a different game," added Marc-Andre ter Stegen. "Everything went the way we wanted. Right now it's hard to think about the Classic on Sunday, you need to recharge your batteries, especially mentally."
Frankie de Jong concluded by saying: "When you play with ten players in Europe, you know you will suffer. We tried, we fought to reach the semi-finals. It's a hard blow because we were convinced we would go through. We have no choice but to try to get up from it."
The club's vice-president Rafa Yosta said: "We believed we would go through, and it didn't happen. It's very disappointing, I want to thank the crowd that supported us. Congratulations to Paris Saint-Germain, they're a great team, but it's very difficult to play with ten players. This is football, this It wasn't our day."