Tough Champions League Group Won't Change Barcelona Aim of Wrestling Trophy Back
It’s too soon for all concerned, but the UEFA Champions League draw has pitted Luis Enrique’s Barcelona against Pep Guardiola and Claudio Bravo’s Manchester City in Group C. They will cross paths twice before the dust has had time to settle on the coach’s arrival and that of their new goalkeeper.
The Chile international was the safety net as Barca won La Liga twice in succession and the man whom the club made the difficult decision to sell, finally relieving the pressure from the situation between Bravo and Marc-Andre ter Stegen.
Seeing Guardiola go up against Barcelona again will also be intriguing, although this is a battle we have seen before, with Barcelona seeing off his Bayern Munich side in the Champions League semi-finals in 2015.
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Regardless of the group they have been given—and it is a tough one—Barcelona’s aim will not waver, no matter the distractions that lie ahead. This year they are going out to wrestle the Champions League trophy back off Real Madrid and re-establish their dominance of Europe’s premier competition.
Even if they fail to do so, they will still have a record of four wins in the last 12 editions of the trophy, which means one year in three that Barcelona have ended up victorious, an outstanding feat. But modern football demands success all the time and, after all, Real Madrid’s record of 11 European Cups isn’t going to beat itself.
Barcelona's heavy investment this summer should give them the depth they need to compete for the trophy. That's where they lost it last season, as tired players hit a dip at a crucial moment of the season and were eliminated in the quarter-finals by Atletico Madrid.
Now manager Luis Enrique has enough resources to keep his key men in tip-top shape for when the crunch games come.
Iconic centre-back Gerard Pique embodies Barcelona’s desire to win the Champions League and can upset their archrivals more than any other player. Two recent moments emphasise this.
Firstly, in a promotional event at Barcelona’s casino he agreed to do some interviews. One was with Mundo Deportivo, in which Pique was asked about the Champions League. He replied (h/t ESPN):
"It's the top competition and the most prestigious one. We are Barca, we have the duty to try to win every title. We hope this will be a great year.
For the last two years we have won the La Liga and Copa del Rey titles and we have proved by far that we are the best team in this country by a big margin.
For many years the Spanish double had not been retained and that means we are the team to beat. We need to continue in the same way.
"
And then, in a Twitter question-and-answer session with his followers, he took a dig at Real Madrid for how they ended up winning the Undecima—their 11th crown.
A fan asked what he would prefer to happen in the Champions League draw, and Pique replied, per Sport: "An easy group. The third-placed side from Italy in the last 16, the eighth-placed team from Germany in the quarter-finals, the team that finished fourth from England in the semi-finals, and the return legs all at home.”
That was the run Real Madrid had on their way to the final last season, where they eventually overcame Atletico Madrid on penalties to win the trophy.
Even after the draw was published, Pique tweeted “another day in the office," likely a reference to the difficulty of Barcelona’s group, which also includes Borussia Monchengladbach and Celtic, while Real Madrid were paired with Borussia Dortmund, Sporting Lisbon and Legia Warsaw, which is not quite as tricky.
The view from the club is that Barcelona have been given another tough group, but nobody doubts they will be able to negotiate it and arrive in the competition’s knockout stage.
Barcelona vice-president for sport Jordi Mestre and director of professional sport Albert Soler, spoke about the draw, per the official club website.
Mestre said:
"It’s a difficult group. German clubs are never easy and Celtic won’t be either. We played them in the preseason but that has nothing to do with a Champions League fixture.
We have had some good games with Manchester City recently. We qualified the last two times but that doesn’t mean the same will happen this season. It’s surprising that we have met so often in such a short period of time.
"
Meanwhile Soler focused on the clash with City, with homecomings for Guardiola and Bravo.
“We’ll give a warm welcome to Guardiola and Claudio Bravo, who will have the chance to say goodbye to the fans,” he explained. “It’ll be nice for him to be able to come back home. We are very grateful to Bravo for what he did for Barca in his two seasons here.”
Despite Bravo asking to leave there will be no animosity between him and Barcelona supporters. It was a difficult decision for all concerned and that is universally understood. Bar Joe Hart, the solution benefits everybody.
Guardiola gets the goalkeeper he wants, Bravo gets a first-team spot, Ter Stegen gets the Barcelona throne, Luis Enrique won’t be pestered so much by the media about his goalkeeping selections and Jasper Cillessen gets a big move from Ajax to Barcelona.
That said, anybody who does disagree with the decision to let the reliable Chilean stopper leave will be watching the clashes between Barcelona and City like hawks, waiting to pick up on any errors by Ter Stegen which Bravo "wouldn’t have made."
On paper, the Scottish champions shouldn’t be too tricky to overcome, and Barcelona have won seven of the 12 encounters they have shared. However, the atmosphere at Celtic Park on a big European night can be an equaliser.
Andres Iniesta pointed out as much in 2012 when Barcelona headed to Glasgow. Per the Daily Record, he said:
"The Celtic fans are very special and the club and players can be very proud of them.
They are the best I have ever heard and I am sure playing in front of a crowd like that can make a big difference for the players.
When there are 60,000 of them the noise will be deafening.
That will help Celtic but we have experience of playing in intimidating stadiums and we are going there to win.
"
Monchengladbach, meanwhile, have never played against Barcelona before. They showed against Young Boys in the qualifying play-off that they have goals in them, romping to a brutal 9-2 aggregate victory.
Thorgan Hazard, brother of Chelsea’s Eden, is one of their main forward threats, as part of an attacking trident that also boasts Raffael and Lars Stindl. The MSN—Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar—it is not, but they will be dangerous and hard for Barcelona’s defence to keep in check.
As tricky as these tasks are for Barcelona, their aim has not wavered. Come June 3, 2017, if Barcelona are not in Cardiff, Wales, preparing for the Champions League final, something, somewhere along the way will have gone wrong. It will be a failure.
Those are the high standards they have set themselves, and that is a magnificent position to be in.
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