This year was a revival of Barcelona, a club that lost direction after Guardiola’s farewell in 2012. The stepping down of their legendary players like Xavi, Iniesta, and Neymar also hurt them deeply. When Lionel Messi left in 2021, the club had already become a mess. That mess has been cleaned up by Hansi Flick this year. The puzzle that Xavi, with his homecoming as a manager, couldn’t solve.
Barcelona has been in cruise mode in the 2024-25 season. They already added two accolades to the list: the Copa del Rey and Supercopa de España. In both, they thumped their archrivals, Real Madrid, to make it even sweeter. The Catalans are already on their way to bag their third title of the season, La Liga. After 34 matches, they are leading the league table with 79 points, 4 more than second-placed Madrid.
Out of the last 6 matches, Barcelona have beaten Real Madrid 4 times. They lost twice, but a lot of their wins, including their 5-2 triumph in the Supercopa final, were dominant. But when it came to the highest competition in Europe, the UEFA Champions League, they missed their step and fell off the bridge before reaching the final.
Barca’s exit from the UCL shows us the fact again that dominating in the domestic leagues doesn’t guarantee you winning the Champions League. Manchester City and Liverpool, over the years, have shown us this. Both clubs have been dominating the English Premier League (which is branded as the toughest league) and couldn’t repeat that domination when it came to the elite European club competition. And most of them bent their knee in front of a single name, the emperors of the UEFA Champions League, Real Madrid.
5 UCLs in 9 Years: The Barca Fall Shows How Great Real Madrid Are
One trait that stands out in greatness is invincibility. And that’s the trait that Real Madrid wear when they step onto the ground in UCL games. Whether they are in good form or not in domestic competition, they always manage to thrive above others at the biggest stage.
The core reason behind their invincibility is their fearlessness. In a lot of situations when they were behind by more than one goal, Real Madrid players were seen so calm and still, controlling the narrative of fear that they always kept their opponents on the back foot. The same trait has helped them pull off a lot of last-minute comebacks in the competition. Those comebacks fed their self-belief even further. And this confidence is what was lacking in other destroyers like Manchester City in the UCL knockout rounds, even when they were equipped better than Real Madrid.
In the last 9 years of the UEFA Champions League, the Mighty Whites have crowned 5 times (2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18, 2021–22, and 2023–24). The triple under Zinadine Zidan from 2016 to 2018, when Cristiano Ronaldo was still part of Madrid, was the most dominant phase in the club’s history in the 21st century. After that, Carlo Ancelotti led the team to two more titles, in 2022 and 2024, making Real the undisputed Kings of Europe.
As the Italian coach is about to step down following the Whites’ UCL exit this season, Madrid is already preparing to invade Europe again next season under the new manager, who possibly will be their former legend Xabi Alonso.
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