UEFA Champions League
Barcelona to ‘start from scratch’ after Champions League exit, says Xavi
Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez has vowed to return the Spanish giants to the pinnacle of European football after they crashed out of the Champions League on Wednesday (Dec 8) with a 3-0 defeat at Bayern Munich.
Five-time European champions Barca were eliminated in the group stage for the first time in 21 years. They had reached the last 16 in each season since 2003-04, when they did not qualify for the competition at all.
Goals by Thomas Mueller and Leroy Sane gave Bayern a 2-0 half-time cushion in falling snow at the Allianz Arena, which was devoid of spectators due to the high numbers of Covid-19 cases in Bavaria.
Teenager Jamal Musiala grabbed Bayern’s third after the break to seal Barcelona’s fate.
“I’m angry. I don’t like that this is our reality now. We start a new era from here – to work hard and get back in the Champions League,” said Xavi.
Bayern, who also beat Barca 3-0 at the Camp Nou when the sides met in September, had already qualified for the knock-out stages as Group E winners.
They now join Liverpool and Ajax with a perfect six victories from six games in the group stage.
Benfica’s 2-0 win at home to Dynamo Kiev means Barcelona finish third and drop into the Europa League.
It was almost eight years to the day since Bayern lost a home Champions League game in the group phase and the Bundesliga leaders were in no mood to be generous.
Xavi, 41, who took charge of struggling Barcelona four weeks ago, has now suffered back-to-back defeats after his first loss as head coach against Real Betis last weekend.
“We start from scratch. Unfortunately, we are in the Europa League, which is not the place for us,” he insisted.
“We will work hard to put Barcelona back in the right place. We have many things to correct.
“We need to win the Europa League and recover the points in the Spanish league.
“We have had some injuries, maybe we can sign some more players, but we start from zero.”
Bayern were not even at full strength.
With Joshua Kimmich quarantining after a positive Covid test and Leon Goretzka injured, 18-year-old Musiala played out of position alongside Corentin Tolisso in defensive midfield.
Barcelona made a bright start but faded after losing Jordi Alba to injury with half an hour gone, just before Mueller headed Bayern into the lead.
Robert Lewandowski found space on the left of the box and flicked a pass to Mueller, who claimed his 50th Champions League goal when his header looped beyond the reach of Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen.
It was a double blow to the Barca bench, who had just learnt Benfica were 2-0 up against Dynamo in Lisbon.
Things went from bad to worse for Barca when Sane hit the net with a powerful long-range shot that deceived ter Stegen.
Sane should have put the result beyond doubt when Bayern attacked just after the break.
Instead of tapping the ball into the empty net, he poked the ball into ter Stegen’s grateful arms.
Alphonso Davies, who also ran Barcelona ragged in Bayern’s historic 8-2 drubbing in the 2020 quarter-finals, again caused havoc down the left flank.
The quicksilver Canadian created Bayern’s third when he pulled the ball back for Musiala to tap home from close range on 62 minutes.
With 20 minutes left and the contest effectively over, Bayern coach Julian Nagelsmann started taking off first-choice players.
First to go were wingers Davies and Kingsley Coman.
Then followed star striker Lewandowski and centre-back Niklas Suele, yet still Barcelona could not threaten Manuel Neuer in the Bayern goal.
After the final whistle, Mueller backed Xavi to turn Barcelona around.
“When you look at the (Barcelona) team, they are good players, they have everything they need,” said Mueller.
“We know things aren’t going so well behind the scenes and I had the feeling they couldn’t find the intensity they needed, which helped our cause.”
-AFP
Spain’s LaLiga will be represented by at least five teams in the Champions League next season after Italy’s Lazio were eliminated from the Europa League on Thursday while Athletic Bilbao progressed to the semi-finals.
LaLiga earned the second of two European Performance Spots handed out by UEFA, which go to associations “with the best collective performance by their clubs” in UEFA competitions.
England’s Premier League was the first to secure an extra berth in Europe’s top competition, on top of the four granted to the top four teams in the domestic table.
Villarreal are fifth in the LaLiga standings, with 51 points from 30 matches.
They are three points ahead of sixth-placed Real Betis and eight in front of Celta Vigo and Mallorca, with all three clubs having played one more game than Villarreal.
-Reuters
Real Madrid’s record-breaking manager Carlo Ancelotti had no complaints after his side’s Champions League reign was ended in emphatic fashion by Arsenal in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.
Italian Ancelotti won a record-extending fifth Champions League trophy last season as Real beat Borussia Dortmund at Wembley, but his side went down 2-1 at home to Arsenal for a crushing 5-1 aggregate defeat.
“There are two sides to football, the happy part that has happened to us many times and the sad part we have to handle in the same way. It has happened to us fewer times than to other teams, but we have to manage it because it allows us to be better in the next games.”
When Real keeper Thibaut Courtois saved Bukayo Saka’s early penalty and minutes later Real were awarded a spot kick for a push by Declan Rice on Kylian Mbappe, it seemed that the great escape might still be a possibility.
But Real’s penalty was overturned after a lengthy VAR check, and in truth, they never looked remotely threatening as their bid for a 16th European Cup crown ended in feeble fashion.
“To change the dynamic, we needed something positive, like the penalty he whistled and then took off. We needed something to have more confidence, but we were not able to change the dynamic of the first leg,” Ancelotti said.
Despite the defeat, Ancelotti said Real’s season still has plenty of possibilities, not least trying to bridge a four-point gap to La Liga leaders Barcelona.
“Now we are in the fight for La Liga. We have a disadvantage, but we have the Barcelona game, we have the Copa del Rey final, the Club World Cup, and we have to manage this part, which is another part of football that we are not used to,” he said.
“It’s time to hold our heads high and learn from our mistakes. It’s sad today, but I have absolutely no worries about how my players will respond. We’ll fight on, we’ll learn from the experience, and we’ll try to be better for the next match.”
-Reuters
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Arsenal snuffed out any chance of a famous Real Madrid comeback to reach the Champions League semi-finals after a 2-1 victory in the Bernabeu Stadium completed a 5-1 aggregate win on Wednesday.
Holders and 15-time winners Real never looked like clawing back a 3-0 deficit from last week’s quarter-final first leg, and when Bukayo Saka scored for the visitors in the 65th minute, their fate was effectively sealed.
Vinicius Junior seized on a rare defensive slip a couple of minutes later to rouse the home crowd, but it proved too little too late as Carlo Ancelotti’s side exited feebly.
Arsenal’s superiority over the two legs was underlined in stoppage time as Gabriel Martinelli burst through to score.
They will face Paris St Germain in their first Champions League semi-final since 2009.
“I think it’s such a special night for this club, it’s a historic night for this club,” said Arsenal’s Declan Rice, whose two sublime free kicks put his side in control last week.
“There was a lot of talk coming in about them coming back from the dead, they’ve done it so many times before. But we had so much belief and confidence from that first leg that we had enough to come here and win the game.”
A cacophony of noise greeted kickoff with the home fans fuelled by the hope of witnessing what would have been one of the greatest Champions League comebacks.
But Real’s knack of extricating themselves from difficult positions in a competition they won six times in the previous 11 seasons deserted them as they were comprehensively outplayed.
“Did we fall short of what we wanted in pure football terms? Perhaps,” Real captain Lucas Vazquez said. “They really are terrifically organised defensively.”
PENALTY MISS
Real needed a storming start, and Mbappe had the ball in the Arsenal net in the opening minutes but was offside when chesting in a Vinicius cross.
Arsenal were in no mood to simply sit and protect their lead, though, and Saka forced a great save from Courtois. They were handed the chance to kill off the tie when Raul Asencio needlessly hauled down Mikel Merino from a corner, and referee Francois Letexier eventually awarded a penalty after checking a pitch-side VAR monitor.
Saka opted for a Panenka-style chipped penalty, and Courtois clawed away the ball.
It looked like a potentially pivotal moment, and when Letexier pointed to the penalty spot at the other end after Kylian Mbappe tumbled under minimal contact from Rice, Arsenal’s night looked like taking a turn for the worse.
After five painstaking minutes, however, Letexier was again invited by VAR to view the monitor and to a chorus of whistles from the home fans, overturned his original decision.
That scare aside, Arsenal coped easily with Real Madrid’s famed frontline who were given little to work with.
Arsenal keeper David Raya was not required to make a save before halftime as Real’s predilection for hopeful crosses into the area proved easy pickings for the visiting defence.
Real’s Mbappe barely had a sniff of a chance as Arsenal showed great control and Saka made up for his first-half miss with a clinical finish after being sent clear by Merino.
William Saliba gifted Real a lifeline when he was caught in possession on the edge of his area, allowing Vinicius to score, but there was never any sense of panic in the visiting ranks.
Martinelli put the icing on the cake in added time, again from a Merino assist, to send Arsenal’s fans into raptures.
-Reuters
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