Barcelona began their Champions League campaign with a 2-1 loss to Monaco after Marc-Andre ter Stegen horror show and Eric Garcia’s early red card.
Barcelona are almost a decade without a Champions League title and they are hoping that 2024/25 will finally be the season where they break their duck.
However, the start of their campaign did not get off to a very good start after Eric Garcia was forced to take a red card as the last man after captain Marc-Andre ter Stegen’s loose ball right in front of Barcelona’s box.
It wasn’t too long afterwards that Maghnes Akliouche opened the scoring for Monaco as the French side peppered Barcelona’s goal with shots due to a man advantage.
It was Lamine Yamal yet again who managed to bring a rather dull Barcelona back into the game with a thunderous goal from outside the box.
The second half saw Monaco’s dominance continue as Barcelona failed to create chances of their own and threaten Philipp Kohn.
Monaco then took the lead yet again as George Ilenikhena scored on the counter with 20 minutes left to give Monaco the win.
The MVP
Adolf Hutter made the choice to play right-back Vanderson on the left for the match against Barcelona as he trusted him to contend with Yamal’s threat.
His choice paid off as the 23-year-old was superb all night in dealing with both Yamal and Jules Kounde, barring the 17-year-old’s wonder goal in the first half.
Vanderson was hardly to blame there.
The Big Loser
As he has so many times before on European nights, it was ter Stegen who was the biggest issue for Barca as the German struggled through the 90 minutes.
It was ter Stegen’s very poor ball through the middle of the field that caused Garcia’s red card before the German failed on his near post on Monaco’s first goal.
He was then very soft on Monaco’s winner, as Ilenikhena’s shot went straight through him as he dived early.
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Barcelona will now look to dust off the result quickly as they will take on Villarreal at the Estadio de la Ceramica on Sunday, September 22.
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