Liverpool 4-0 Barça: Collapse

Shame.

Barcelona are out of this season’s Champions League thanks to a historic collapse and a 4-0 loss to Liverpool at Anfield in their semifinal second leg. The Blaugrana were terrible from the start and deserved to go out to a great Liverpool team missing their two best players that just wanted it more, and for the second consecutive year Barça are eliminated from European football in the most embarrassing way possible.

FIRST HALF

The start of the game was a disaster for Barça, who conceded a goal to Divock Origi after a horrible mistake by Jordi Alba just seven minutes into the half. Liverpool’s pressure was suffocating in the first 10 minutes, and for a while it looked like Barça were going to implode. But the Blaugrana stayed calm and started to create problems on the counter, and Alisson had to make two huge saves to stop Lionel Messi and Philippe Coutinho.

After about 25 minutes the game settled down, and both teams had their moments with the ball but didn’t really create big chances for a while. We had some injury breaks in the final minutes of the half, and the pace really slowed down. That favored Barça, who managed to catch their breath and pass the ball around until the end of the half.

At halftime, Barça survived a crazy early pressure from the home team, but they needed to find at least one goal to have a more comfortable second half.

SECOND HALF

Liverpool once again started the half by amping up the pressure and creating big chances, and then disaster happened: on a span of two minutes, Georginio Wijnaldum found himself alone in the box twice and scored both times, and Barça looked a lot closer to elimination than qualification.

Barça needed a goal to reach the Final, and Ernesto Valverde made his first substitution with Nélson Semedo replacing Coutinho. Barça didn’t really improve but started going forward more, and Lionel Messi started to get on the ball which led to a few nice chances. Valverde brought on Arthur for Arturo Vidal to add a bit more creativity to the Barça midfield.

And then, tragedy: Liverpool won a corner, Alexander-Arnold was smarter and quicker than everybody, and found Origi alone in the box for Liverpool’s fourth. Barça were going out in embarrassing fashion, and the worst thing is they were not offering any threat at all. There was zero desperation and urgency from the team, and the clock was just ticking away with the Blaugrana staring at their biggest-ever collapse.

And the clock kept ticking away, and ticking away, and ticking away... and then there was no time. The final whistle came, Anfield exploded, and Barcelona imploded. A truly ridiculous performance, a coward manager, and a second consecutive disaster in Europe.

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Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Roberto, Piqué, Lenglet, Alba; Vidal (Arthur), Busquets, Rakitic (Malcom); Messi, Suárez, Coutinho (Semedo)

Goals: None

Liverpool: Alisson; Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson (Wijnaldum); Henderson, Fabinho, Milner; Shaqiri (Sturridge), Origi (Gomez), Mané

Goals: Origi (7’, 79’), Wijnaldum (54’, 56’)

Source: barcablaugranes.com