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Spanish forward #27 Lamine Yamal (left) of Barcelona and Spain of Cadiz during the Spanish league soccer match between Cadiz CF and FC Barcelona at the Nuevo Mirandilla Stadium in Cadiz on April 13, 2024 Defender #15 Javi Hernández will be competing. (Photo by Jorge Guerrero /AFP)
Barcelona host Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday, hoping their young stars can shake off the ghosts of their past and help return the five-time winners to the Champions League elite.
The Catalans’ dramatic 3-2 quarter-final first-leg win in Paris was arguably their best away result in the past decade and gave Catalans big dreams.
“The elation is understandable. It’s better to live with elation than with pessimism,” Barça coach Xavi Hernández said on Saturday.
Read: Lewandowski inspires Barça with Atlético’s strong attack
Xavi’s side, who snatched victory at the Parc des Princes, featured 16-year-old Lamine Yamal and 17-year-old Pau Kvarsi, the two youngest players ever to play in the last eight of the Champions League.
The fresh blood brings new life to a team that has not only struggled this season but has been weighed down mentally by failure after failure since their last European title in 2015.
The Catalans lifted the trophy in Berlin, propelled by a magical attacking line-up of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez, and led by current PSG manager Luis Enrique.
The next few years were followed by a dramatic collapse on the continent’s biggest stage, and to make matters worse, an ignominious defeat in the early rounds.
Yamal and Kvarsi were unaffected by the loss and Xavi praised their mentality.
“(Yamal) is very calm, very mature. Despite his young age, he is well thought out in the sense that he endures everything that happens to him well,” Xavi said. spoke to the moon.
Xavi offered similar praise after Kvarsi helped Barcelona climb out of the last 16 against Napoli.
“He has a very well-organized mind,” the coach said.
Read: Xavi won’t continue at Barcelona due to ‘lack of respect’
“Put the ghost aside.”
In 2018, Kvarsi’s composure was exactly what Barcelona needed when they gave up a 4-1 first-leg lead and lost 3-0 in the quarter-finals against Roma at the Olympic Stadium in the Italian capital.
The following season they were unable to defend the 3-0 advantage they had gained at Camp Nou and collapsed at a frenetic Anfield.
The shocking 4-0 defeat in the second leg sent shockwaves through the club and led to the eventual sacking of manager Ernesto Valverde several months later.
The final nail in the coffin for most of the players remaining from Barcelona’s golden era was the 8-2 defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich in the 2020 season.
Many of Barcelona’s veteran stars appear to have been traumatized by their collapse in Europe, with the likes of Messi, Suarez, Jordi Alba and Gerard Pique eventually leaving.
Goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen, alongside Sergi Roberto, who famously scored the decisive sixth goal in Barça’s 6-1 ‘lumontada’ (reversal) against PSG in 2017. , one of two survivors from the victorious 2015 team.
“We have to put the ghosts aside,” the goalkeeper said in October after Barça won a hard-fought group game against Porto.
“We don’t need to put any pressure on ourselves… We have a different team (now).”
Bayern’s defeat left no doubt about the idea that Barcelona had fallen from the upper echelons of the game.
Since then, Barcelona have been eliminated from the group stage twice, dropped out of the Europa League, and are experiencing their lowest period of decline since the beginning of the 21st century.
President Joan Laporta has vowed to return Barcelona to the top echelon of European football, with the club now on the verge of reaching the last four after four years without reaching the quarter-finals.
Critics accused him of failing to fulfill his promise to keep Messi at the club, but a role on the right wing of attack is now where Yamal thrives.
Laporta was also accused of sacrificing future TV revenue to fund splurges on the likes of Robert Lewandowski, Jules Kounde and Rafinha in the summer of 2022, all of whom scored twice against PSG. He achieved a brilliant result.
Winning La Liga last season showed that Barcelona are improving, and now it remains to finish the job they started in Paris and make that progress visible in Europe.
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