This certainly isn’t the virtuous cycle Joan Laporta aimed for. Barcelona are instead facing up to a cascade of likely events that could see them spiral out of the Champions League at the group stage, and possibly lead to far greater consequences.
As it is, after the irony of a thrilling 3-3 draw that will attract genuine global attention and electrify social media feeds, the Catalans need to beat Bayern Munich and for Viktoria Plzen to avoid defeat to Internazionale. The numbers do not look good.
