The man who could restore Barcelona's pride in the Champions League is, ironically, one of the factors that has plunged them into the mire of disappointment and shame - Hansi Flick.
Early morning October 24 (Vietnam time), Barcelona will play the third match of the league stage in the UEFA Champions League 2024-2025, when they host Bayern Munich at home. Before Bayern, Barcelona had both beautiful and painful memories.
More specifically, we can distinguish between beauty and pain as the two periods with and without the complete trio of Xavi Hernandez - Andres Iniesta - Lionel Messi. Accordingly, in 2009 and 2015, the Catalan team both defeated the German team on the journey to win the Champions League - Messi scored 4 goals in 4 matches against each other.
But 2015 was also the last time that glory on the continent came to Barca, counting this season. After Xavi and Iniesta left Barca one after another, even though Messi still had Luis Suarez and Neymar to share the attack, they gradually fell into a period of crisis in the European playground.
The climax of that crisis was the horror that Bayern brought with the score of 8-2 in the quarter-finals of the Champions League season 2019-2020.
It was not the aggregate score but the only match, in the only season interrupted by COVID-19, forcing the return of the knockout stages and the match on neutral grounds until August 2020.
If there is any consolation for Cule, that defeat took place in Lisbon (Portugal), not Barcelona or Munich - two locations that could have doubled the humiliation.
Since then, Barca and Bayern have met twice more in the Champions League, with four matches ending in wins for the German side. Barca have failed to score a single goal and conceded 11.
As time passed, the pain called "2-8" gradually passed, but every time we met Bayern, that story was mentioned like a bleeding wound that could never be healed.
This year, they meet again, in a different format of the Champions League. Of course, Barca wants revenge, wants to collect debts, wants to erase the "devil tattoo" marked by Bayern, even though this is only the league stage - instead of the group stage.
Can the Spanish representative do it? Xavi left and returned to the coaching chair but not really satisfied. Gerard Pique, Iniesta retired, Suarez, Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba followed Messi to Inter Miami, Neymar went to Saudi Arabia, Marc-Andre ter Stegen is seriously injured...
Who can Barca rely on? Interestingly, the people who can do that are the members of the Bayern team that beat them 8-2 - coach Hansi Flick and striker Robert Lewandowski.
The Polish striker left Bayern and joined Barca in 2022. At this point, Lewandowski is 36 years old but is still a role model for the Spanish team's young strikers to learn from.
He scored 73 goals in 107 matches for Barca in all competitions, including 14 goals in 12 matches this season.
And if Lewandowski wasn't enough - he played Barca against his old team in 2022 but failed to score - Flick's arrival as manager could be a catalyst for change.
Barca now, under Flick, have become more solid and resilient. Their young players are much more mature and although they have had to change their style - pressing more - their stamina is still very good.
Barcelona are leading La Liga with 27 points after 10 rounds and scoring 33 goals. Standing in front of them is Bayern, also leading the Bundesliga after 7 rounds (17 points), scoring 24 goals and conceding only 7.
