Barcelona: Although Barcelona won the Spanish league and cup double, they will finish the season racked with regret after a shock 5-4 loss to Levante on Sunday ended their chance of an unbeaten La Liga campaign.
That followed their Champions League capitulation in Rome, leaving a bitter taste despite the satisfaction of wresting the Spanish title back from Real Madrid and trouncing Sevilla in the King’s Cup final.
“I feel very angry but I have to look forwards, because what makes me angry isn’t going to give me solutions,” said Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde, who rested his talisman Lionel Messi for the Levante game.
“We’ve played games without Messi before and come through them.”
Barcelona had last tasted league defeat 13 months ago against Malaga, going 43 games unbeaten, but they failed in the 37th match of this season to tarnish an otherwise flawless domestic campaign.
Before the 3-0 quarter-final second-leg defeat by AS Roma there was a genuine belief Barca could win the treble, and after licking their wounds following that disappointment the focus was switched to finishing the season unbeaten.
“We’re all annoyed to lose. It’s come in the 37th game, so it hurts to lose it now, but it could have come in the first, third or 14th game,” Valverde said.
Midfielder Sergio Busquets was trying to remain positive.
“It’s a shame to lose (the unbeaten season), but don’t forget that we’ve won the league,” Busquets said.
“It’s been an incredible season and, if you look beyond this one game, I think we can be proud.” Spanish media was not as kind.
“The second fiasco of Barcelona’s season,” ran a headline in Marca.
“Barca arrived too late to rescue their record,” lamented Diario Sport.
Led by Emmanuel Boateng’s hat trick and two more goals from Enis Bardhi, Levante was heading toward a historic rout of the recently crowned champions when the hosts built a 5-1 advantage after 56 minutes.
But Barcelona roared back, with Philippe Coutinho adding two more goals to his first-half strike to complete a hat trick before Luis Suarez converted a penalty to cut the deficit to 5-4 in the 71st.
Suarez headed high from close range in Barcelona’s last chance to snatch the draw.
Paco Lopez, the coach who has led Levante’s turnaround of winning 25 of a possible 30 points since he took over in March, said that beating Barcelona proved “nothing is impossible.”
“To score five goals against Barcelona is almost impossible, but our motto all week has been ‘nothing is impossible’ and we have achieved something historic,” Lopez said. “The explanation is the same as that of our play over the last two-and-a-half months: work, trust in one another and the belief that this team has no limits.”
