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Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting escapes opponent Frenkie de Jong
Photo: Peter Kneffel / dpa
The wildest minutes:
FC Barcelona, FC Bayern Munich, the floodlights of the Camp Nou: that still sounds like sporting superlatives.
That evening, however, it often remained a cat-and-mouse game, with Bayern playing the role of cat and Blaugrana as an overwhelmed mouse.
After all, a sequence before the break in which Barça climbed to eye level offered wonderful Champions League minutes: First Marc-André ter Stegen shone with a world-class save against Jamal Musiala, then Barcelona countered via Ousmane Dembélé and Robert Lewandowski, who countered in the penalty area Mathijs de Ligt went down.
From a near goal to a penalty kick in just a few seconds?
Thinking: Referee Anthony Taylor correctly checked the scene on the monitor, saw that de Ligt clearly played the ball before Lewandowski's threading in, and gave the all-clear.
Barça shrank back to mouse size.
The result:
the German record champions won 3-0 (2-0) in Catalonia.
Bayern continue to prance through the alleged "death group" C without losing a point and win the group, FC Barcelona will continue in the Europa League in the new year.
Here is the match report.
Already over before the kick-off: It
had been foreseeable for two weeks that Barcelona's dreams of reaching the last 16 of the Champions League would be shattered.
Since missing out on a win against rivals Inter Milan, Barça have needed a lot of support.
It was unclear where this should come from: Viktoria Pilsen, Milan's opponent in the early evening, has so far been pointless and harmless.
The Czechs should stay, Inter won 4-0 in the Giuseppe Meazza Stadium, the direct comparison sealed FC Barcelona's early end - before the ball even rolled against Bayern.
Resurgent:
Once the ball really got rolling, things didn't get much better for Barça.
After just a few seconds, Sadio Mané came dangerously close to winning the ball in the opposing penalty area, and the star then scored the lead (10th minute).
The laurels for this, however, go to the assist provider: Serge Gnabry was the architect of the 1-0 with a wonderfully tempered through ball from his own half.
Just in time for the start of the World Cup in Qatar, the national player seems to have become a key player again in late summer with a dry spell of six games without a scorer point in the league: It was the start of a whole hat-trick of assists.
Even the official man of the game, Matthijs de Ligt, said after the final whistle: "For me, Serge Gnabry was man of the match."
They miss him, they don't miss him:
For Bayern, the guest appearance was also a reunion with the former goalscorer Robert Lewandowski, who was valued more than loved.
His departure has appeared in a new light for almost two weeks: namely since Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting was promoted from emergency nail to regular striker by Bayern coach Nagelsmann, and in this role already contributed the fifth goal in the fourth game.
The wondrous rise of Choupo-Moting shows that a real number nine on Säbener Straße was actually missing in the first weeks of the season - but also that this number nine does not have to be called Robert Lewandowski in order to function.
Unbalance with announcement:
Maybe the imagery with the Bayern cat and the Barça mouse isn't fair.
Barça would be more precise as a cat that tapers into a mouse at the torso.
That sounds very strange, but the game of the Catalans under coach Xavi also looks very strange: At the front, the Catalans look not dissimilar to a top team, with world-class players on the pitch, world-class players on the bench and combinations worth seeing.
But the further you go back in the team sections, the greater the deficits: six-man genius Sergio Busquets is now losing the pace at the highest level, the full-backs have no international format, and that Marcos Alonso, who came from Chelsea, suddenly defended on the inside instead of on the left, can also be not have been plan A.
Of course, FC Barcelona is also plagued by injuries,
Maybe more than a club after all:
While FC Barcelona was able to attract the love of football purists for a long time, the club recently sparked the anger of exactly the same fans.
This has mainly to do with the financial wisps of the club management, and it may be just anger.
And yet: When you see how the Blaugrana fans still applauded their team after the final whistle despite their elimination, it is difficult to wish FC Barcelona anything bad.
Instead, maybe a little more sense of proportion in future investments - and a defensive, with which a knockout phase in the Champions League can be achieved again in the future.