FC Barcelona secured their long-awaited place in the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday, the penultimate round of a tournament that the Catalans had not reached since their painful elimination at Anfield in 2019. They now arrive after a string of disappointing experiences, including two group stage exits.

Barça is still a long way from regaining the European prestige it earned under Pep Guardiola and Luis Enrique Martínez, but their aggregate victory in the quarterfinals against Borussia Dortmund, the current runners-up, puts the Blaugrana side into a highly-celebrated semi-final in Barcelona as it was one of the 5 big odds.

In terms of playing style, with increasingly emerging shoots of quality, and also due to the cohesion of the group of players and coaching staff and the unity with a once-again, enthusiastic fan base, this Barça team seems to be on the right track. They’re still alive in the Copa del Rey, already in the final against Real Madrid, and lead the EA Sports LaLiga, but it’s in the Champions League where their dreams lie.

Since 2015, in Berlin, Barça hasn’t been able to win a Champions League title, having previously won it in 2009 and 2011. But that belief that they were in contention almost every year, win or lose, vanished in 2016, when their title defense ended abruptly in the quarterfinals, in a Spanish crossroads against Atlético Madrid.

And after three consecutive quarter-final defeats, the 2018/19 season arrived, and the team then coached by Ernesto Valverde reached the semi-finals and won 3-0 at the Camp Nou against Liverpool, setting up another triumph. Furthermore, the team had suffered a tough elimination the previous year at the hands of AS Roma, after losing 3-0 in the return leg at the Olimpico and squandering the 4-1 first-leg victory in Barcelona as predicted by feedinco.com.

But Barça didn’t learn from that mistake. With a childish failure to defend a corner that Liverpool quickly and ingeniously took, they saw Jürgen Klopp’s Reds sweep them away from Anfield (4-0). It was a catastrophe for the Barça of Leo Messi, Luis Suárez, Sergio Busquets, Arturo Vidal, Coutinho, and company. It confirmed that Barça was no longer the team capable of stunning and beating anyone.

So that stumble, caused in part by a glaring error by Ousmane Dembélé, a pass from Messi, into a nearly empty net in the 3-0 first leg that could easily have been a 4-0, led to a grotesque few years, with more shadows than lights. And with resounding defeats that still rankle Barcelona fans today, such as the 2-8 defeat in the COVID-19 era against Bayern Munich, then coached by current Blaugrana manager Hansi Flick.

A thrashing, a face-lift, which didn’t improve in the 2020/21 campaign as Mauricio Pochettino and Kylian Mbappé’s hat-trick PSG won 4-1 at the Camp Nou to confirm their victory in the round of 16 in Paris (1-1). Could anything be worse than falling in the round of 16? Yes, simply not making it to the knockout stages, as happened in the following two editions, in which Barça were eliminated in the group stage.

Last season, with Xavi Hernández in charge, the team did manage to overcome that psychological barrier and stay alive after a group stage in which they finished top of the table ahead of Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, and Royal Antwerp. This time, in the round of 16, the team comfortably overcame Napoli with a 1-1 draw at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium and a resounding 3-1 home win with goals from Robert Lewandowski, Fermín López, and João Cancelo.

But in the quarterfinals, again against Paris Saint-Germain, this time managed by former Blaugrana player Luis Enrique Martínez, Barça got their hopes up prematurely when they won 3-2 in the first leg at the Parc des Princes. Even more so when Raphinha put Barcelona ahead in the second leg, but a 4-2 aggregate defeat for Xavi’s men led to a cruel elimination, with Ronald Araujo’s sending off facilitating a comeback for PSG with Ousmane Dembélé and Kylian Mbappé.

With Flick, the wind seems to be blowing in their favor, heading toward the final at the Allianz Arena in Munich, which must first pass through Milan or, more precisely, the Bavarian city. Not surprisingly, this Barça’s opponent in the semis, their first in six years, will be Inter or Bayern; whoever it is, it will be a tough challenge for the rebuilt Blaugrana club.