Barcelona out of Champions League after being easily beaten by Bayern Munich

Bayern 3-0 Barcelona: Muller and Sane in the first half and Musiala in the second send the Catalan side into the Europa League

(REUTERS)

Barcelona find new levels of humiliation. This Champions League elimination wasn’t an 8-2 or one of those collapses, but it was a first group-stage elimination since 2001.

Far from a vision of how to play the game, they are the ultimate image of an empire that has crumbled. You could say this 3-0 win was another illustration of Bayern Munich’s own power as they secured a 100% record from the group, but they didn’t have to reach such heights. It was all so easy for the German champions, as they seemed to get through Barcelona with every single attack.

Almost the worst thing about it was how it never felt like they had any chance at all. That was even before Benfica basically ended any tension on the evening by going ahead against Dynamo Kyiv before the 20th minute of the other match.

This defeat, and elimination, was of course down to so much more than what actually happened on the night. There were the ghosts of many bad Barca defeats to Bayern within it, after all.

It is the latest consequence of a long decline, and a series of bad decisions taken at every turn.

So, while this match was nothing new or unexpected, it did maybe raise some new questions for Barcelona.

Given the club still looks like it could do with a total reset, and maybe an overhaul of its entire ideology - perhaps to something more German or at least closer to the best practises of the modern game - it’s fair to ask whether the best move was another nostalgia act; another attempt at a revival of the good old days. That is what the appointment of Xavi - who remains a novice due to exceedingly limited experience at this level - represents.

Their former playmaker hero doesn’t just need to rebuild the team. He needs to be part of a reconstruction of the club. It is an absolutely huge job, that feels far bigger than even 2003 or 1988.

For this match, Bayern were really just skipping over the rubble.

Another problem was that it didn’t even serve as much of an obstacle. That was almost literally true for Leroy Sane’s goal, as the ball just went through the hapless Marc-Andre ter Stegen. Even before that, he had set a tone by just playing a pass right back to Bayern Munich mere yards from goal. Sergio Busquets was forced into a foul that brought a booking, and took away even more of their edge.

Barcelona didn’t just look so much worse than Bayern, in terms of quality. They looked so naive.

Julian Nagelsmann’s team were shredding them with every attack.

For the game-setting first goal, the peerless Robert Lewandowski just danced past Pique, sending him this way and that before sending the ball over for Thomas Muller. The forward still produced a hugely inventive header to score, but it almost felt like he did it because he could do it rather than that he needed to.

It was a night for Bayern to experiment, to indulge themselves, and yet it was still so emphatic a win despite them taking it so easy.

By the end, and Jamal Musiala’s passed finish, they were almost strolling through Barca. There will of course be arguments that Xavi’s team didn’t “disgrace themselves” but even being forced to such contortions is so pitiful.

(Getty Images)

This is one of the great names of the game.

And yet it is absolutely no surprise they are out of the Champions League at the first stage. It instead felt an inevitability, and almost righteous justice for the way the club has been going.

There is another argument that this will be better for Xavi himself in the long run. It will avoid what would surely have been another chastening evening in the knock-out stages, and the Europa League will give more space to develop this young team and coach.

The next big question is how good he is at that, though.

We really have no idea, such is the irrelevance of his work in Qatar. This looked like a Barcelona team with the basics of the Pep Guardiola principles, but absolutely none of the substance - either in quality or what they were doing.

So, as Barcelona go out of the competition, they are just left with another brutal reality: this is a husk of a club, with so many players well below their standards, unable to recruit, and with a novice in charge.

It is a huge job. This, however, was no huge surprise.