No quick solution to Barca rebuild
MUMBAI: The last time Barcelona failed to enter the Champions League quarter-finals, Lionel Messi was 19. But it is a measure of how expectations have changed that Wednesday’s 1-1 draw away to Paris St Germain felt as if a semblance of pride had been restored.
“We’re out, which is what counts, but we go out with good feelings,” said coach Ronald Koeman after the 2-5 aggregate loss at Paris’ Parc des Princes. “Huge credit after the result of the first leg. Proud of my team. There’s a lot of the season left and we will fight to the end,” tweeted injured star Gerard Pique after a first round-of-16 exit in 14 years.
Barcelona had their chances in the first half despite trailing by a Kylian Mbappe penalty. It stoked memories of the 2017 tie against PSG where Barcelona had lost the first-leg 4-0 before bouncing back to win the second leg 6-1. But “Remontada”, which is what that turnaround was called, didn’t strike though Messi did score a stunning equaliser. It was Messi’s missed penalty—PSG goalie Keylor Navas deflecting it to the bar— that extinguished hopes of another escape to victory. An idea of how far Barcelona have fallen behind Europe’s elite came last season when Bayern Munich won the single-leg quarter-final 8-2. The signs of rot had been there—five-time European champions, Barcelona hadn’t won the Champions League since 2015—but Bayern showed cracks couldn’t be papered over anymore.
Since then, Messi has had a well-publised problem with the club’s former president Josep Maria Bartomeu and an association that had begun on a paper napkin nearly ended via a “burofax”—a Spanish postal service where receiving a document and its contents need to be acknowledged. Messi stayed, the club got a new president and a new coach but it is obvious that the rebuild will be painstaking and slow.
The club wants Messi to be part it. Koeman spoke about his desire to keep his biggest star on Wednesday.
“Leo has seen for some time this team is growing,” he said. Soon after being elected, new president Joan Laporta made it clear that his first priority will be to persuade Messi, a six-time Ballon d’Or winner, to continue. Having off-loaded a number of players—among them Luis Suarez, Arturo Vidal and Ivan Rakitic—and struggling with a debt of 1 billion euros, Barcelona have focused on some young players such as Pedri González, Ansu Fati and Ilaix Moriba. Koeman has kept them in second place in La Liga, six points behind Atletico Madrid, and alive in the Copa del Rey where they staged a remarkable comeback to oust Sevilla 3-2 in the semi-final.
But this is a team way off the one coach Pep Guardiola took to the la Liga and Champions League double in 2008-09; Messi, who made his senior team debut in 2004-05, scoring 32 goals in both competitions that term including one in the Champions League final against Manchester United. It is also several notches below the team for which Messi scored in the 2010-11 Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid evading Lassana Diarra, Sergio Ramos, Raul Albiol and Marcelo before beating Iker Casillas.
“Don’t write about him, don’t try to describe him, just watch him,” is what Guardiola had said about Messi.