Soccer-Barcelona dumped out of Europe again in latest continental setback
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MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) – Thursday was Groundhog Day for Barcelona at Old Trafford as Manchester United struck back to claim a 2-1 victory that knocked the Spanish side out of the Europa League and the Catalans theirs after another continental game Failure made licking wounds.
Last season they also ended up in the Europa League play-offs after finishing third in their Champions League group and were eliminated from the European second division side in the quarter-finals after a 3-2 loss to Eintracht Frankfurt at the Camp Nou.
It was the first time since 1998/99 under Louis van Gaal that Barca have failed to reach the knockout stages of the Champions League in two consecutive years and only the fifth time they have reached the group stage in the last three decades are eliminated.
After a glorious run from 2005 to 2015 and winning four Champions League titles, Barcelona have not progressed past the last 16 in elite European competition for the last three seasons after being beaten by Bayern Munich in the 2019-20 quarter-finals by 2: 8 had been humiliated.
They have only reached the semi-finals once since winning the 2014/15 Champions League.
Between disappointments, Barca fell into a financial crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Restricted by LaLiga’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules, they were unable to re-sign great club Lionel Messi, who joined Paris St Germain as a free agent in 2021.
FINANCIAL HIT
Falling back from Europe is a dent in Barca’s finances, whose perilous state prompted the club’s board to sell a stake in its TV rights and agree to sell its audiovisual division as part of several financial levers.
In this year’s budget, Barcelona’s board of directors predicted that the team would reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League and win the LaLiga title.
It was a bold and overly optimistic view given that Barca are now suffering a severe blow to their 2022-23 earnings after being knocked out of the Champions League and Europa League.
This year should have been a year of recovery as a revamped Barcelona side led by new signing Robert Lewandowski was expected to take a new direction.
They are La Liga leaders with an eight-point lead over their bitter rivals, Spanish and European champions Real Madrid.
However, their terrible results in Europe have taken some of the shine off their domestic form.
“It’s a big disappointment but I think we’ve been better this season than the previous one, at least we showed ourselves,” Xavi told Movistar Plus after Thursday’s defeat to Manchester United.
“We’ve played against top clubs like Bayern Munich, Inter Milan (in the Champions League) and now Manchester United and we couldn’t keep up.
“Now we have to stay humble and assess ourselves on how we can better compete at the highest level in Europe next season.”
(Reporting by Fernando Kallas in Madrid; Editing by Ken Ferris)