It's been a decade since Barcelona's last Champions League win, but...

Hard to believe it has been 10 years. When Barcelona won the Champions League on June 6th, 2015 to complete a treble, it looked like a team at the peak of its powers. With the world’s finest forward line in full flow and Lionel Messi in his prime – he hadn’t even grown a beard at that point –, more European glory would surely follow. But while rivals Real Madrid have won the Champions League five times since, Barça are without a continental crown since 2015.

A series of damaging defeats in the following years, especially away from home, put paid to Barcelona’s hopes of lifting the trophy again. The Blaugrana came closest in 2019, but inexplicably threw away a 4-1 semi-final first-leg advantage at Anfield against Liverpool in a crushing 4-0 loss in the return match.

So it has been a while. Messi’s painful exit in 2021 and a crippling financial crisis both hurt the Catalan club and made competing at the highest level more difficult, even if there were domestic trophies and big wins over Real Madrid in the interim.

But 2024/25 saw a return to the Champions League semi-finals for Barça for the first time since 2019 and even though the Catalans narrowly missed out on a place in the final in an epic 7-6 aggregate defeat to Inter which could easily have gone the other way and may have done if one of two decisions were different, this has been the club’s best season in many years.

As well as reaching the last four of the Champions League, Barcelona cruised to the title in LaLiga, won the Copa del Rey and also the Supercopa de España. And en route to those titles, there were four big wins over Madrid, with four, five, three and four goals scored in those meetings, respectively, and an aggregate of 14-7 overall.

It could hardly have gone better for Hansi Flick in his debut season and next term, Barça will be buoyed by a return to the renovated Camp Nou, which should give the team a boost in big European ties. There will be a new goalkeeper, too, with Espanyol’s Joan García set to sign. With a better ‘keeper, Barça would likely have beaten Inter – and surely would have given Paris Saint-Germain a much better match in the final.So this young group of players, led on the pitch by football’s next big star Lamine Yamal at just 17 years of age and off it by a fine, treble-winning coach in Flick, should be well placed to achieve great things in the years ahead. A decade after Barça’s last Champions League triumph, another European Cup crown shouldn’t be too far away.