Barcelona dropped down to the Europa League for the second season running with a game to spare. Inter’s 4-0 victory over Viktoria Plzen condemned them to their early exit, before Bayern ran riot at Camp Nou with a 3-0 victory.
Dropping to the Europa evidently had a morale impact on the players, who were looking thoroughly demotivated from kick-off.
The first goal came from a glorious through ball by Serge Gnabry to find Sadio Mané, who easily beat Héctor Bellerín for pace and chipped the ball over Marc-André ter Stegen to give Bayern the lead.
20 minutes later, a similar counter-attacking goal with another assist from Gnabry and a good finish by Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting.
A disastrous night for Barca, who failed to even register a single shot on target throughout the 90 minutes.
The last time FC Barcelona failed to qualify for the UCL group stages two years in a row was in 1997/8- 1998/9. These were the first two season of Xavi as a player. This time it is the first two seasons of Xavi as the coach.
Barcelona looked to have been given a lifeline in the final minute of the first half when Matthijs de Ligt was penalised for a foul on Robert Lewandowski inside the box, but VAR overturned the decision.
VAR intervened again to disallow a third Bayern Munich goal from Serge Gnabry before the Bavarians put the finishing touches on the result in stoppage time as Pavard converted from a mishit Gnabry shot.
When asked about his side’s elimination from the competition, Xavi noted the strength in Group C.
“We have to face the reality. I already said that we have to grow little by little and today there were good things.
“Today we did not compete on their level. In Munich we were better, but today we didn’t compete.
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“Today Bayern was better. Just as we were better in Munich and we should have won, today they were better. The group was very complicated and everything happened to us in the Champions League,” Xavi said.
