Barcelona has reached the Champions League final eight times. After two disastrous seasons in Europe, Xavi Hernández’s team finally won a high-stakes match on the continent. Do Dragao executed it in front of a port that had never been delivered before and ended up being as surprised as the consequence.
Barça won on the same day, October 4, one year after losing to Inter in Milán’s Giuseppe Meazza, in what was a new chapter in the saga that had gripped him for so long. Then nothing works for the Barça, not even the arbitrajes. Now it seems that a new era has begun, with a very different team (only Ter Stegen, Gavi, and Lewandowski remained in the starting lineup) and a different fortune.
Last year, that Barcelona was defeated in Milán by a Calhanoglu goal in the first half, and this Barcelona was defeated in Porto by a Ferran Torres goal in the first half. The Xavi team had been left on the bench in Italy, and Portugal had never felt that way. And in that game, there was no clear penalty call against Pedri, which may have changed the course of the season. And at Do Dragao, when the Barça was at its worst, the VAR overturned a penalty that the referee had awarded to the Porto, only minutes before the luso team scored.
Football, it is said, is a state of euphoria, and whether for one reason or another, this Barça is diametrally different from the one that competed in Europe last year. For the time being, he has decided not to give him the spandex.
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