Inter Milan 1-0 Barcelona: Europa League looms large after latest Champions League loss for Xavi – The Warm-Up

Wednesday's big stories Xavi Hernandez’s Barcelona have lost again in the Champions League – this time 1-0 to Inter Milan after Hakan Calhanoglu's injury-time, first-half strike was enough to separate the two sides. Ad And after the defeat at the San Siro in Group C, the four-time winners sit in third place, staring down the ignominy of a second-straight demotion to a Europa League campaign. Barcelona have home games against the Nerazzurri and Bayern to come before finishing with a trip to Viktoria Plzen.

Their plight is not terminal, but it is illustrative of the club’s decline – and also that the return to the elite level of European football is not a linear one, even for a club as big as Barca. Transfers'We will see' — Xavi does not rule out Messi returning to BarcelonaYESTERDAY AT 08:15 The concept of Barcelona not qualifying from a Champions League group seemed – not so long ago – inconceivable. The Spanish club, in fact, hold the record for the most consecutive first-place group stage finishes in Champions League history.

Between the 2007/08 and 2019/20 campaigns they topped their group 13 straight times. Yet, since their semi-final defeat to Liverpool during the 2018-19 season, they have got progressively worse: they lost to Bayern at the quarter-final stage during the 2019-20 season, to PSG at the last-16 stage during the 2020-21 season and were knocked out at the group stage – finishing behind Bayern Munich and Benfica — last season. Granted, Barcelona could deem themselves unlucky to lose to Inter.