Over the past decade, few clubs have been as successful as Barcelona. The Catalan giants have largely dominated football, winning the Champions League three times, La Liga six times, and the likes of Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta and Xavi have become legends of the game. Under boss Pep Guardiola, Barca essentially rewrote football history.
However, every great team has to lose at some time. Sure, some losses are to be expected or can be justified by the strength of the opposition, but others are of the more humiliating kind, the sort of losses to lower-level teams that make a big club a laughing stock for a while, or heavy losses to rivals that often sting for years.
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Even the great Barcelona have suffered losses like that, and here are five of the most humiliating in the past decade.
#1 Real Madrid 4-1 Barcelona – 7th May 2008
Real Madrid vs. Barcelona – A.K.A the El Clasico – is probably the most heated rivalry in football, and this May 2008 victory for Real was one of Barca’s worst losses in recent history.
After finishing 2006-07 without any trophies, the pressure was on boss Frank Rijkaard to deliver the goods in the subsequent season, but it was not to be. Just a week after being eliminated from the Champions League by Manchester United, Barca faced a Real side who had clinched La Liga just three days beforehand.
They could’ve dampened Real’s celebrations, but failed miserably.
Barca were forced to form a guard of honour for their bitter rivals and then capitulated on the pitch, with Raul, Arjen Robben, Gonzalo Higuain and Rudd Van Nistelrooy putting Real into a four-goal lead. And although Thierry Henry scored a consolation, Xavi was sent off in injury time to compound the Catalan misery.
The game proved to be the final curtain for Rijkaard, as it was announced that he would relinquish his duties at the end of the season and hand over to Pep Guardiola. Every cloud does indeed have a silver lining maybe.
#2 Barcelona 0-2 Hercules – 11th September 2010
Going into the 2010-11 season, Barcelona were undoubtedly the best club side in the world. Not only had they won both La Liga and the Champions League in 2009-10, a great number of their players – Xavi, Carles Puyol, Andres Iniesta, et al – had starred in Spain’s 2010 World Cup triumph.
A September 2010 game against newly-promoted Hercules, then, should’ve been easy. After all, the Alicante-based side hadn’t even been in Spain’s top division for thirteen years prior to the season. In a truly humiliating upset though, Barcelona somehow ended up losing by two goals at the Nou Camp – their first loss there since May 2009.
Paraguayan striker Nelson Valdez scored both of Hercules’s goals to write himself into that club’s history books, while French World Cup winner David Trezeguet went close to adding a third before being denied by Victor Valdes.
Newly-signed Javier Mascherano had a stinker of a debut, too, being booked in the 19th minute and then hauled off at half-time. Both Barca and Mascherano would go on to have the last laugh – they won La Liga by four points while Hercules were relegated – but this was still a humiliating defeat for the world’s best team.
#3 Barcelona 1-2 Real Madrid – 21st April 2012
The wheels ended up coming off Guardiola’s Barca in the 2011-12 season and this was the defeat that signalled the end of an era – it was sandwiched between Barca’s Champions League semi-final games against Chelsea which they also lost (3-2 on aggregate), and it was after the second Chelsea game that Guardiola announced he would be stepping down from his post.
The loss at home to Real had to sting most, though. Not only did it essentially hand Real the title for the first time since 2008, but it was also Barcelona’s first home defeat in 55 games.
Barca looked jaded from the off and were beaten by a masterful display of counter-attacking from Jose Mourinho’s Real side.were beaten by a masterful display of counter-attacking from Jose Mourinho’s Real side.
The winner was scored by – who else? – Cristiano Ronaldo, who found the goal after Alexis Sanchez had cancelled out Sami Khedira’s scrambled opener.
While there’s no shame in a loss to Real for most clubs, it’s a little different for Barcelona, and this being a truly terrible performance – the Catalans didn’t have a shot on target until 70 minutes – puts it up there with the most humiliating in recent times.
#4 Bayern Munich 7-0 Barcelona (aggregate) – 23rd April 2013 & 1 st May 2013
Clearly missing the Pep factor in 2012-13, Barcelona were still favourites for the Champions League but ended up being demolished by German powerhouse Bayern in the semi-finals, losing on aggregate by a truly humiliating 7 goals to none. It was almost poetic that Guardiola had already been announced as moving to Munich at the end of that season.
Bayern ran out 4-0 winners in the first leg at the Allianz Arena after a gamble on an unfit Lionel Messi failed to pay off for Barca’s boss Tito Vilanova. It was Barca’s heaviest European defeat since a 1997 4-0 loss to Dynamo Kiev, and left them needing a miracle to qualify for the final in the second leg.
The miracle never came though as Bayern came to the Nou Camp and humiliated Barca on their own turf, winning 0-3 with goals from Arjen Robben, Thomas Muller and an own goal from Gerard Pique. Despite Barcelona having the bigger share of possession – 53% - Bayern proved that tiki-taka was not unstoppable by latching onto loose passes and launching devastating counter attacks throughout the game.
In the end, the tie was one-sided over the two legs and signalled the end of Barcelona’s European dominance, as they suffered the heaviest aggregate defeat in semi-final history.
#5 Celta Vigo 4-1 Barcelona – 23rd September 2015
This was Barca’s worst defeat in La Liga since 2008 – the pre-Guardiola days – as a full-strength team including Messi, Neymar, Suarez and Pique were thumped by a Celta Vigo side featuring the likes of Liverpool flop Iago Aspas – who scored twice – and former Stoke City striker John Guidetti, who added the fourth.
It was Luis Enrique’s heaviest defeat as Barca manager in La Liga, only Barca’s second league loss in 26 games, and it also ended a 100% run in the league to that point. While the win took Celta to the top of the league momentarily, it was still a humiliating defeat caused largely by Barca’s defence looking creaky and lethargic.
Pique in particular – once recognised as one of the finest defenders on the planet – was especially sloppy, but the majority of Barca’s players seemed too slow in closing Celta’s attackers down, and their famed trio of strikers wasted key chances too.
Luis Enrique was quick to praise Celta for their performance and while Barca ended up with the last laugh – they went on to win La Liga – it was this type of humiliating defeat that made Enrique’s Barcelona seem much more vulnerable than the legendary side built by Guardiola.
#6 Paris St. Germain 4-0 Barcelona – 14th February 2017
History didn’t appear to be on PSG’s side going into this Champions League quarter-final first leg with Barca. Although they’d dominated the French league, success in Europe had always eluded them and their new manager Unai Emery had only beaten Barcelona once before in 23 attempts.
And while Barca hadn’t lifted the Champions League since 2015, they were still one of the favourites for the tournament.
As it turned out, not only did PSG manage to win the first leg, but they also inflicted a truly humiliating defeat on Barca, winning 4-0 with two goals from Angel Di Maria, one from Julian Draxler, and one from Edinson Cavani.
And while Barcelona did dominate possession, they seemed seriously toothless on the night, with Messi, Suarez and Neymar seemingly anonymous. The Catalan giants only recorded one shot on target in the ninety minutes.
The one saving grace for Barca? Despite no side in history ever overturning a four-goal deficit in a Champions League knockout tie, Barcelona apparently didn’t care about history as they somehow pulled out a miracle 6-1 win at the Nou Camp to progress to the semis, winning 6-5 on aggregate.
The home win didn’t quite wash out the bad taste that the humiliating loss in the first leg left, though – it was Barca’s heaviest defeat in the competition since the Bayern Munich loss in 2013.
