Barcelona’s 24-game unbeaten streak in 2025 has come to an end but the Blaugrana have still booked a spot in the Champions League semi-finals, despite a bad 3-1 defeat away to Borussia Dortmund at the Signal Iduna Park in the second leg of their quarter-final tie. Barça were dominated and outplayed for almost the entire game and at times looked at risk of giving away their huge first-leg lead, but managed to survive the Yellow Wall and a brilliant Dortmund performance to reach Europe’s Final Four for the first time in six years.
FIRST HALF
Dortmund came out exactly as expected and completely blitzed Barça in the opening minutes, winning balls high up the pitch with their high press and firing shot after shot to test Wojciech Szczesny. The Catalans didn’t offer much resistance early, and were made to pay as Szczesny fouled Pascal Gross inside the box and Serhou Guirassy scored from the spot to give the hosts the lead after just 10 minutes.
The atmosphere was insane from the get-go and Barça clearly felt the impact from the crowd as well as the absence of Pedri, who could only watch from the bench as his teammates simply forgot how to play two passes in a row and constantly gave the ball away time after time under the slightest bit of pressure.
Gross almost doubled the lead but was caught by Barça’s offside trap, and the Blaugrana somehow survived the first 20 minutes having conceded just once. The visitors tried to establish more of an attacking presence and had a few good moments in the opposing half, but the entire front three was inexplicably wasteful and constantly ruined good attacks with bad touches, passes and some awful decisions.
Barça simply could not figure out how to grow into the game, and Dortmund didn’t have to worry about being hit on the counter and sent bodies forward constantly, creating real scoring chances to double or even triple their lead, but Szczesny made some important stops to keep his team alive.
The halftime whistle came to end a period in which Barça were utterly dominated from start to finish and should have been down by at least two goals to make the tie very interesting, but they managed to survive with minimal damage and needed a ton of improvement at halftime to make sure there would be no unnecessary drama in the second half.
SECOND HALF
Hansi Flick made no substitutions at the break and things did not change at all to start the second half, and Barça’s defense crumbled after just four minutes as Guirassy doubled his tally with an easy header after a corner and Dortmund cut the aggregate defict in half with more than 40 minutes remaining.
Things started to feel really tense for the Blaugrana, but they got some much-needed relief five minutes after the second goal: Jules Kounde played a great through ball to find the run of Fermín López, and his cross was deflected by Ramy Bensebaini into his own net to give Barça a chance to calm down.
Flick sent on Pedri shortly after the Barça goal to add the control his team desperately needed to slow down the Dortmund blitz. The plan worked as Pedri’s presence instantly settled everything down for Barça, and the Catalans finally kept Dortmund at bay for an extended period of time.
Barça finally looked in control and cruising to the semis as we approached the end of the game, but a bad mistake gave Dortmund life again: Julien Duranville sent a cross into the box and Ronald Araujo made a horrible attempt at a clearance, and Guirassy was gifted an easy chance and found the net to complete his hat-trick with 15 minutes to go.
Dortmund almost scored the fourth one minute later when substitue Julian Brandt came off the bench, got in behind the Barça defense and found the bottom corner, but the goal was disallowed for offside.
The home team was energized once again and started to blitz Barça just like they did throughout the first half, and the Catalans had to make several crucial interventions at the back to stop Dortmund from being just one goal away from forcing extra-time.
The full-time whistle eventually came to end a bad night for Barça that still ended on a positive note, but things could have gotten ugly multiple times throughout the night. You’d have to think the game might have looked different had Pedri started and Barça didn’t have such a huge aggregate lead which leads to some natural relaxation, but this is still a bad loss that ends a great unbeaten run in 2025.
Hopefully this truly is a one-time thing based on unique circumstances, and the most important thing of all is that Barça are finally back on the Champions League’s inner circle of title challengers.
Dortmund: Kobel; Süle, Anton, Bensebaini; Couto (Brandt 77’), Nmecha (Reyna 65’), Gross, Svensson; Beier (Duranville 65’), Guirassy, Adeyemi (Gittens 77’)
Goals: Guirassy (pen 11’, 49’, 76’)
Barcelona: Szczesny; Kounde, Araujo, Cubarsí, Martín; De Jong, Gavi (Pedri 58’); Yamal (Ferran 70’), Fermín (Eric 70’), Raphinha; Lewandowski (Olmo 86’)
Goal: Bensebaini (OG 54’)
