Reaction as Barcelona exit Champions League at group stage for second successive season
- Published
Barcelona have dropped out of the Champions League for a second successive season under Xavi, who took over in November 2021
"Complete failure", "penance", "night of terror" - the morning headlines were unforgiving in Spain as Barcelona crashed out of the Champions League at the group stage for the second year running.
With a game to spare, Barcelona's 3-0 home defeat by Bayern Munich on Wednesday left them certain of finishing third and dropping into the Europa League.
Manager Xavi and president Joan Laporta were keen to play down that the five-time Champions League winners would enter Europe's second-tier competition once again.
But 19-year-old midfielder Pedri was more critical, claiming Barcelona "don't deserve to be in the Champions League".
"For me it's a failure," he added.
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Laporta, however, stated: "This is a young project.
"From the beginning we knew we were going to have ups and downs."
In Europe, there have been more downs than ups for Barcelona this season as they picked up just four points from five Champions League games.
They opened their campaign brightly with a 5-1 win over Czech side Viktoria Plzen, but lost to Bayern Munich and Inter Milan before being held by Inter to a 3-3 draw at the Nou Camp.
"This is our reality and we need to face it," Xavi said after the Bayern defeat.
"Maybe that's what we needed, to be given a beating in order to grow.
"It was already over, too late to do anything. The main reason that we got to this situation was because of our own mistakes in the previous games, we failed to be effective up front."
Before the 2022-23 season began, Barcelona spent almost £200m on new players despite the club being more than £1bn in debt.
They were initially unable to register a number of their new signings because of La Liga financial regulations, but the club freed up funding using several 'economic levers' which included selling a percentage of their future television rights and of their media production unit Barca Studios.
This approach from Laporta has led to accusations that he is "gambling" with the club's long-term future.
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Barcelona have fared better in La Liga, winning nine of their 11 matches, but they sit second behind rivals Real Madrid, who inflicted a 3-1 defeat on Xavi's side earlier this month.
Commenting on the Champions League exit, Xavi said his team needed to "fight for the other trophies left".
"We need to stick together, our fans were great tonight, it was great to see more than 85,000 at Camp Nou supporting us till the end. Bad thing we didn't show up on the pitch," he said.
"There are still other tournaments to play. It's a hard blow but we need to be self-critical to be able to win those titles."
The Champions League has been cruel - Simeone
Atletico's Carrasco missed a penalty in the eighth minute of added time
Atletico Madrid, Champions League runners up in 2014 and 2016, were also dumped out of the competition's group stage after they failed to beat Bayer Leverkusen.
Yannick Carrasco missed a penalty in added time which would have given Diego Simeone's side a win and kept their chances of reaching the knockout rounds alive.
"The Champions League has been cruel to me," Simeone said.
"We lost two finals, one on penalties and another in the 93rd minute.
"But I'm hard-headed and I will continue to try as long as I have the opportunity to qualify for the Champions League and then find the something we lack."
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