Say what you will about them, but Barcelona doesn’t do boring.
Staring Champions League elimination in the face, Barca scraped out a 3-3 home draw with Inter despite having trailed both 2-1 and 3-2 after the 80th minute. Robert Lewandowski pulled the Catalans level in the 82nd minute, and then had to do it again in stoppage time after Robin Gosens had taken the lead back for Inter on an 89th minute counter-attack.
Ousmane Dembélé had given Barca a first-half lead in a game that they more or less had to win to stay alive, only for Nicolò Barella and Lautaro Martínez to give Inter the lead by the 63rd minute.
Lewandowski’s brace, on either side of Gosens’ strike, cemented a high-scoring draw that could have easily seen a few more goals. Inter manager Simone Inzaghi was sent off in stoppage time, while Barcelona were very lucky that Kristjan Asllani wasted a golden chance to finish them off, choosing not to pass to a wide-open Henrikh Mkhitaryan in the game’s dying moments.
Scenarios are looking grim
The result still isn’t particularly good for Barcelona, who now need a miracle to stay alive in Group C. Namely, they need Viktoria Plzen — who have lost all four of their matches in the Champions League so far, and have given up an average of four goals per game — to go to the San Siro in two weeks’ time and get at least a point against Inter.
An early exit would be a repeat of last year, when Bayern and Benfica both finished ahead of them in Group E.
If the Italian side wins that match, Barcelona will be dumped into the Europa League. With the first tiebreaker being head-to-head, and Inter having beaten Barca 1-0 in Italy earlier in the competition, there would be no way for the Blaugrana to get ahead of them.
Even if Barcelona gets the unlikely help from Plzen, they’d still have to beat Bayern Munich, who amid all this chaos have calmly strolled to four wins from four games in the competition. Theoretically, Barcelona could stay alive with a draw against Bayern, but it would require a Plzen win over Inter, and it would still leave Barca needing a win and an Inter loss on the sixth matchday.
Barcelona is under immense pressure to somehow wriggle out of this jam. There is the customary aspect of being a big club that is expected to get to the knockout rounds in every edition of the Champions League, but Barcelona has more than their pride under threat.
The club’s flailing attempts to register their summer transfers meant leveraging their financial future for the present, and getting to the knockout round comes with some potentially major prize money. Simply getting through Group C would bring in €9.6 million, while the eventual tournament winner will get €68.2 million in rewards from UEFA.
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