Bayern Munich eased to a 3-0 win to compound a miserable day for Barcelona as they were eliminated from the Champions League at the group stage for a second successive season.
Inter’s 4-0 win against Viktoria Plzen earlier on Wednesday had already sealed Barca’s fate, which led to a sombre mood from the first whistle at Camp Nou.
First-half goals from Sadio Mane and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting were followed by a Benjamin Pavard strike with the last kick of the game.
Bayern were already through from Group C but confirmed themselves as group winners ahead of Inter with this win, with Barca dropping into the Europa League.
It took just 10 minutes for Bayern to strike after Serge Gnabry played a ball through to Mane, who outpaced Hector Bellerin before calmly dinking the ball past Marc-Andre ter Stegen.
The second also came thanks to an assured pass from Gnabry as Bayern countered and Choupo-Moting was slipped in on the right of the penalty area, firing his shot through the legs of Ter Stegen just after the half-hour mark.
The hosts thought they had a penalty just before half-time when referee Anthony Taylor pointed to the spot after Robert Lewandowski was felled by Matthijs de Ligt, but a VAR check revealed the Dutch centre-back got a touch on the ball before any contact was made with the former Bayern man.
Gnabry had the ball in the net with a terrific left-foot finish to Ter Stegen’s right 10 minutes into the second half, yet his effort was ruled out for offside.
A game that had the feeling of a dead rubber fizzled out, with Lewandowski and Co. never looking like getting back into the game before Gnabry had his third assist of the night as his volley from a corner found Pavard at the far post for a tap-in.
What does it mean? Another season of Champions League heartache for Blaugrana
It was a somewhat eerie night at Camp Nou, with their relegation to the Europa League confirmed before a ball had been kicked.
That coupled with the early goal from Mane seemed to put the writing on the wall, with a number of Barca fans seemingly leaving the stadium at half-time as their team failed to land a single shot on target compared to the visitors’ eight.
This was the first time Barca have been dumped out of the Champions League group stage in back-to-back seasons since the 1997-98 and 1998-99 campaigns under Louis van Gaal.
Bogey boys Bayern beat Barca… again
Barca and Bayern seem to face each other on a regular basis on Europe’s biggest stage, which has been pretty bad news for the Catalan giants.
This was just the fifth time they have been beaten twice by the same team in a Champions League campaign, with Bayern responsible for four of those (also 1998-99, 2012-13 and 2021-22) – Dynamo Kyiv being the only other side to manage it (1997-98).
No happy reunion for Lewandowski
It was the obvious story when these two were drawn together in Group C following Lewandowski’s high-profile transfer from Munich to Barcelona at the end of last season.
Having failed to score in the first game at the Allianz Arena despite a series of chances, the Polish striker was anonymous here, having just 34 touches in his 82 minutes on the pitch, as well as two shots and a passing accuracy of only 61.9 per cent (13 of 21).
What’s next?
Barcelona travel to Valencia in LaLiga action on Saturday, while it is back to the Bundesliga for Bayern as they host Mainz on the same day.