BARCELONA — A blistering Barcelona side blew Borussia Dortmund away at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday to move to the brink of a first UEFA Champions League semifinal since 2019. They did so with goals from each of their devastating front three: Raphinha opened the scoring, Robert Lewandowski netted twice, and Lamine Yamal completed the 4-0 win late on.
There is still the second leg to come in Dortmund next week, but it’s hard to see Barça not setting up a final four meeting against either Bayern Munich or Internazionale. This is a Barça side that plays as a team, works hard for each other and, most importantly, has an attack that regularly feasts on goals.
It is one of the things coach Hansi Flick says he loves most about this team. They never put the handbrake on.
“It’s not finished at 2-0 or 3-0,” Flick said back in January, at the start of Barça’s unbeaten run which now stretches to 23 games in all competitions. “They go to the end of the match. This is what I love and what we like to play.”
That will be the ethos in Germany next week.
“I think we played very well, but we have one more game to go,” Lewandowski told reporters after the game. “We always want to play our game and we want to go there and win. That’s always the objective.
“If you have a 4-0 lead at half-time [in the tie], in the second half in Dortmund you must play the same. Or even better. This is the Champions League and we always want to be at our best.”
Lewandowski is a good place to start. His brace took him to 40 goals for the season, and 99 for Barça, at the grand old age of 36. He has often been overlooked with Raphinha and Yamal dazzling either side of him and Pedri pulling strings in midfield, but he is always ever-present against Dortmund.
His former side must be sick of the sight of him. He headed in Barça’s second here and added the third with a low finish after good work from Yamal and Fermín López. Both goals were accompanied with rabid celebrations despite having spent four years playing for Dortmund before his 2014 move to Bayern Munich. He has gone on to score an astonishing 29 times in 28 games against them since.
Raphinha, meanwhile, is having a Champions League season for the ages. He leads the competition with 12 goals — followed by Lewandowski’s 11 — and has tallied 19 goal contributions in total. That’s the most ever for a Brazilian and level with Lionel Messi’s best European campaign for the Catalan club. His first against Dortmund was his easiest yet — but also created a nerve-wracking wait as VAR checked for an offside. Pau Cubarsí’s touch was heading in when the Brazilian slid in to make sure, with the revision eventually confirming he was just onside.
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Moreno: Dortmund never stood a chance against Barcelona
Ale Moreno says it’s no surprise to see Borussia Dortmund handed a heavy defeat by Barcelona.
“I was worried on the first goal if I was offside, it’s good that it was given,” Raphinha told reporters. “I apologised to Cubarsí. He told me no worries, he’d count it as an assist. I thought the ball was going wide, it was an instinctive decision.”
The numbers are on a par with some of the best attacks to have graced the Champions League in the 21st century. Raphinha and Lewandowski are the first teammates to score 10+ goals in the competition in a single season since Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mané managed the feat for Liverpool in 2017-18. The last Barça pair to both score double figures were Messi in Neymar in 2014-15, the last time the Blaugrana won the competition.
And then there is Yamal, who became the first player to ever score multiple goals in the Champions League knockout rounds before turning 18. He had tortured Dortmund from the start. A brilliant Gregor Kobel save kept him out in the fifth minute, he then curled over before setting up Raphinha, who shot into the side netting.
The teenager’s pass to López in the build-up to Lewandowski’s second goal was sublime, too, and he capped his night with his 14th goal of the season, treating the supporters to a dance with left-back Alejandro Balde to toast another four-goal showing from Barça.
That’s the 21st time this season Flick’s side have netted four or more goals in a game. They have played 48 matches. They have scored 36 goals in 11 Champions League games, an average of over three per match. That’s seven more than any other team — and they’ve played at least two fewer games than most.
It’s at the other end where teams will look to do them damage if their unbeaten run is to end. Dortmund striker Serhou Guirassy missed a hat trick of chances at the end of the first half. If one of them had gone it, it could have been a different game.
The visitors also had chances late on. Wojciech Szczęsny saved from United States international Giovanni Reyna and there was a late goal ruled out for offside, but there was to be no late consolation for Niko Kovač’s side to take back to Germany. Other opponents may not be so wasteful, but keeping Barça out is another thing.
Wednesday’s goal-fest, even if the hard work is still to be done, will do little to quell talk of a treble. Barça are already into the Copa del Rey final on April 26, where they will face Real Madrid, while they also lead LaLiga by four points with eight games to go. And now have one foot in a Champions League semifinal.
“If you are saying that another team is going to win, I don’t know why you go out on to the pitch to play, so we can win the treble,” Yamal told ESPN this week. “We are Barça. We have already achieved it [in 2009 and 2015] — hopefully we can do it again.”
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