Barcelona Is On The Warpath

One of the motivations for the new Champions League format, which debuted in the men's game last season and now has come to the women's side, was to beef up the competition's first stage with more heavyweight bouts. The drool-worthy slate of games that kicked off this year's UWCL campaign on Tuesday was proof of concept. Between Arsenal vs. Lyon and Barcelona vs. Bayern Munich, four of the five best women's teams in Europe went head-to-head in a pair of matches that very well could foretell the eventual final. This presented the four teams in action an opportunity to throw down the gauntlet, declaring themselves the new season's queens in waiting. Unsurprisingly, nobody seized that opportunity with more volcanic fervor than Barcelona.

I should probably be more precise: Though you might think otherwise, that "unsurprisingly" in the previous sentence doesn't apply to everyone. For instance, one group to which it manifestly does not apply is the CBS Sports studio show that anchors American coverage of the UWCL this season, taking over for the tournament's previous broadcast rights-holders, DAZN. (Aside: In my refusal to pronounce that horribly named platform the way they want you to, every time I see those letters I hear in my head Biggie slurring "Days Inn" to get it to rhyme with "blazing" in "Brooklyn's Finest.") As captured in the following video, the panelists took turns giving the most tired "cold night in Stoke"–ass analysis about why the most dominant team of women's soccer's boom era, the five-consecutive-time UWCL finalists, the most embarrassingly talented roster on the planet, the group that has run literally every big club in Europe off the pitch at one point or another in the recent past, was likely to struggle in this competition, starting with the match against Bayern.

In the CBS Sports panel's slight defense, they were not alone in predicting a down year for Barça, nor is the pessimism totally, completely unfounded. The same economic problems that have plagued Barcelona's men's team lately have quietly started to infect the women's team. This offseason Barcelona parted ways with Fridolina Rolfo, Ingrid Engen, Jana Fernández, Lucía Corrales, and Judit Pujols, a mixture of longtime stalwarts and super promising youngsters. Those exits continued a trend that saw the likes of Mariona Caldentey, Keira Walsh, and Lucy Bronze decamp from Catalonia over the previous 12 months. Not all of those exits were motivated solely by the cost savings, but many of them, and the relative paucity of replacements brought in to compensate, were. Most troubling for Blaugrana fans, Paris Saint-Germain made a serious run at signing Alexia Putellas in the waning hours of the most recent transfer window, and while Alexia ultimately refused the Parisiens' overtures, it's likely Barça would've quietly appreciated the sale in order to get her contract off their books. If this Barça group's prime was defined by the peerless skill of its starting XI, its freakish depth, and the solidity of its core cohort, the present team's bench is noticeably thinner, its stars are only getting older, and the club's financial realities mean that almost every single player in that locker room is now available for the right price.

Looked at a certain way, Barcelona's situation does have the makings of a dynasty's downfall. Mostly this is a matter of narrative. Sports talk is sports talk the world over, and the first thing anyone says the moment after any team in any sport wins the big one is, "Well, can they do it again? Do we have a new dynasty on our hands?" The speed with which gasbags of both the professional and armchair variety christen new dynasties is matched only by the eagerness with which they forecast an existing dynasty's fall. All the narrative threads are there with Barcelona, just waiting to be knitted into a tidy tale of sated hunger, rested laurels, Father Time, depleted coffers, and comeuppance. The only problem is that you have to be a real dummy to actually see things that way.

As the team proved most resplendently on Tuesday, rumors of Barcelona's demise have been greatly exaggerated, and also were started by morons. Even with the talent drain, Barça still has unquestionably the strongest starting XI in the world. Their "weakened" bench features multiple players who would start and star for anyone else. The midfield trio that defines the team has been around for a while, yes, but Aitana Bonmatí (straight off winning her third-straight Ballon d'Or last month) and Patri Guijarro are hardly old ladies at 27 years old, and at her best, the 31-year-old Alexia is still capable of hitting levels that probably only one other player in the history of the sport could match.

On top of all of that, one of the hallmarks of the ongoing Barça dynasty is its insatiable drive to win everything, to destroy everyone, to silence all the haters and avenge the few losses they collect upon along the way. May's uncharacteristically flat performance in the loss to Arsenal in the Champions League final surely hurt, but just as sure is the players' desperation to replace the bitterness of defeat with the bloody taste of victory. Unfortunately for Bayern on Tuesday, it was their blood dripping from between Barcelona's gleaming teeth, which were bared in a crazed smile that should terrify anyone who might've hoped that this was the beginning of the end.

There's really not even much to say about the match itself. It was a massacre. The 7-1 scoreline was not in the least bit deceptive. Barcelona score three goals inside of 30 minutes, making a laugher out of what even I expected to be a competitive battle. Alexia had an iconic night, with dozens of ghostly movements and shudder-inducing touches, total control over the pulse of her team and the anxiety levels of the opposition, two assists, and one sensational goal. The celebration of that goal came with a memorable kiss of the Barça badge (eat your heart out, PSG!) and one of the trademark bows she reserves for the biggest moments, which itself speaks to the importance she and the team she leads placed on this game as a statement of intent.

I will give the CBS Sports studio—specifically Kelley O'Hara, who was the best of the bunch, which isn't saying much—a teeny bit of credit for making the correct point that, as evinced by the lackadaisical defending on the play that ended in the Blaugrana's sixth goal, Bayern by the end of the game had simply given up. But even there I think the panelists' read on the situation was soft-headed. It's insulting to think that a team like Bayern Munich, the titan of Germany and ostensibly a credible European Cup–hoister, would simply fail to show up in what may be the defining game of their season. Likewise, resorting to cliches about "wanting it enough" and "lacking leaders," or fake-deep tactical mishmash about pressing triggers and defensive block heights, was all just a failed attempt by the pundits to douse their flaming credibility, which Barcelona had just set ablaze.

The fact of the matter is that Barcelona is uniquely talented and uniquely imposing. This is why they have run over all of Europe for five years going now, and why their opponents, sometimes even their closest rivals, are often so thoroughly overwhelmed sportingly and mentally that they wind up celebrating consolation goals or just giving up entirely. Playing against Barcelona is also playing against its history, and both are capable of crushing you.

All of that said, Barça is not without flaws, and there is no guarantee that they will redeem their loss in last season's UWCL final by winning the next one. This Barça roster really has lost several important pieces from the team that last won the Champions League, and while there should be no doubting the ability of the ideal Blaugrana starting XI to pancake all comers, the team is no longer as equipped to endure the kind of significant, ill-timed injuries that are always a risk in sports. And anyway, part of the beauty of the sport lays in its inherent difficulty and small margins, which make it so that genuinely anybody could beat anybody over a given span of 90 minutes.

Nevertheless, it's flatly stupid to think that Barcelona isn't still clearly the best team in the world, or that the recent departures have totally gutted the roster, or that Barça's Liga F supremacy reflects anything other than Barça's global supremacy. (How anyone is still making that last argument after what we've seen over the past five years is beyond me.) There are indeed four serious UWCL contenders this season—at this point I think you have to drop Bayern off this list after Tuesday's showing—but none look as strong as Barça either on paper or on the pitch. Arsenal's win last season was an awesome story, but I don't think even the biggest Gooner would deny that it was more a matter of good fortune than revealed greatness. Lyon is yet again loaded and looked very sharp in Tuesday's 2-1 away win over Arsenal, but after an overdue roster shakeup, it's still unclear whether all the new additions, especially in midfield, will cohere. Chelsea is as Chelsea always is, a team with seemingly 30-something very good players yet only a couple truly special ones; as the one member of the Big Five that wasn't in action on Tuesday, the Blues didn't exactly stake their flag in the ground in their own UWCL opener, drawing against ho-hum Dutch club Twente.

I don't know who's going to win the UWCL this season, and that fact excites me. In between now and that final, there is a ton of soccer to play, improvement to make, injuries to suffer, and talents to discover. To inform your thoughts about what to expect along the way, I would suggest that you listen more to what the players themselves have to say in matches like Tuesday's, and less to the blatherers who waste your time before and after.