Key events
47 mins: Gittens, who seems to have started this half on the left, where Adeyemi spent the first, cuts inside and sends a low shot zipping just wide of the far post.
46 mins: Peeeeep! The second half is under way!
The players are back out! Well, most of them – Maximilian Beier has come on for Adeyemi, who was on a booking and had pushed his luck a couple of times.
Half time: Barcelona 1-0 Borussia Dortmund
45+2 mins: And that’s it! Barcelona have the lead at the break, but it’s been nothing like as one-sided as the first seven or eight minutes suggested it was going to be. The home side might be 10-5 up on shots and 5-1 ahead on shots on target, but that’s only because Guirassy, twice, when given a good scoring chance, completely missed the ball.
45+1 mins: Guirassy doesn’t miss this kick, turning past Inigo Martinez before lashing a left-footed shot into the side netting. Just the one minute of stoppage time is signalled.
45 mins: Another chance for Dortmund, Adeyemi crossing from the left and Guirassy once again completely missing the ball.
44 mins: Inevitably the Germans’ defence then opens up, but the move ends with Fermin Lopez sending in a weak shot from the edge of the area.
43 mins: Barcelona are passing the ball about. It’s all technically lovely, but Borussia have numbers in defence and appear vaguely in control.
41 mins: Szczesny also makes an easy save, from Gittens’ dribbly 20-yarder.
41 mins: Raphina has the ball on the edge of the area, and tries an audacious, high-stakes pass to Lewandowski. The ball does eventually fall to the Pole, who tries an overhead kick and presents Kobel with an easy save.
40 mins: Er, now it’s 1-1.
39 mins: In tonight’s other Champions League game, Aston Villa have taken a 1-0 lead over Paris St-Germain in Paris.
36 mins: What a chance for Borussia! It’s a lovely ball chipped over the last defender by Chukwuemeka and Guirassy only has to tap it past Szczesny – but he completely misses it!
34 mins: Borussia have half a chance, a shot charged down in the area, and a few seconds later Yamal so nearly plays in Raphinha, but the ball is just beyond him.
32 mins: That’s a getting-rather-silly 12 goals, and 17 goal involvements, in 11 Champions League games this season for Raphinha.
29 mins: Yamal is played in down the right and has an easy(ish) pass to set up Raphinha for an easy chance to his left, but it’s on his right foot and he completely fluffs it.
GOAL! Barcelona 1-0 Borussia Dortmund (Raphinha, 25 mins)
The free-kick is sent to the back post, headed back in and turned goalwards by Cubarsi. It beats the keeper and is rolling into the net when Raphinha throws out a leg to help it over the line. There’s a long VAR check because Raphinha was only just onside when Cubarsi kicked the ball, and really he shouldn’t have touched it at all.
25 mins: Adeyemi is booked for trying to manoeuvre Kounde out of his way with a tug of the hair.
24 mins: Barcelona aren’t even being forced to work for possession, Borussia are just handing it to them, again and again. This is not a wise tactic, I fear.
23 mins: Barcelona keep the ball for an age but this time a very marginal decision goes against them, De Jong punished for not really committing a foul.
19 mins: A novel corner routine from Barcelona, which involves Raphinha reentering the pitch from behind the goal, obviously unmarked, and being passed to. They don’t score from it, which is just as well because it would have cause one hell of a rumpus.
17 mins: Borussia try to break from a Barcelona corner, but Balde brings Chukwuemeka down and the referee charitably lets him get away with it.
15 mins: Guirassy nearly gets on the end of a right-wing cross, but he doesn’t, and he was also very obviously offside for almost the entire move.
13 mins: A more sane few minutes, in which Barcelona haven’t shredded the Borussia defence once.
10 mins: This too curls out of play, but it does at least bounce on its way through.
9 mins: But now the visitors win a corner of their own, Gittens’ cross deflecting behind.
8 mins: Barcelona are making a complete mess of Borussia in these early stages, just turning their defence into so much woodchip.
7 mins: Save! Raphinha is played in down the left again. This time Lewandowski hangs back on the edge of the area and is picked out by the pull-back, but his finish is too central and Kobel keeps it out.
6 mins: And Yamal shoots again! A lovely trick to get past Bensebaini on the right, but he tries an audacious/ludicrous shot from a near-impossible angle rather than attempting a pass.
5 mins: Save! A lovely backheel from Lewandowski in the build-up, and Yamal gets the ball, cuts onto his left foot and shoots too close to Kobel.
4 mins: Which is curled over the six-yard box and back out of play on the far side.
3 mins: Raphina finds space on the left, but Bensebaini clears his low cross for a corner.
2 mins: Barcelona, on the break, cross the halfway line for the first time.
Commentator: “… and this is where Barcelona can hit you so hard!”
Barcelona: Turn around, play ball gently backwards.
1 min: Peeeeep! Borussia take the centre, and immediately pump the ball downfield and out of play.
Right, preambles completed, anthem played, hands shaken, coin tossed.
Out come the players! Is there any stopping Barcelona in this competition, and if so are Borussia the team to do it? We’re about to (go some of the way towards) find(ing) out!
Apparently there are 560 accredited journalists for this game, setting a new record, as well as representatives of 88 rights-holding broadcasters. This strikes me as probably too many.
This is a strong look from Raphinha. Serious yeah-and-what-you-gonna-do-about-it vibes.
The teams!
Team news has landed, and tonight’s line-ups look like this:
Barcelona: Szczesny, Kounde, Cubarsi, Martinez, Balde, De Jong, Gonzalez, Yamal, Lopez, Raphinha, Lewandowski. Subs: Pena, Kochen, Araujo, Gavi, Torres, Fati, Torre, Christensen, Victor, Garcia, Fort, Gerard.
Borussia Dortmund: Kobel, Bensebaini, Anton, Can, Ryerson, Nmecha, Chukwuemeka, Adeyemi, Brandt, Bynoe-Gittens, Guirassy. Subs: Meyer, Laurenz Lotka, Yan Couto, Ozcan, Reyna, Beier, Duranville, Svensson, Sule, Watjen, Kabar.
Referee: Espen Eskas (Norway).
Hello world!
Borussia Dortmund won seven of their first 10 games this season, happy times when they stuck four past Phonix Lubeck (yeah, I know), Heidenheim and Bochum and seven past Celtic, when their season was ripe with hope and optimism (even if all three of the non-wins were in the Bundesliga and they were therefore only sixth in the league when the run ended with three successive defeats ). Now they are eighth, three points behind Monchengladbach in sixth and also three points above 12th-placed Wolfsburg, the side that dumped them out of the German Cup back in October.
They have, in short, turned out to be not very good. Yet here they are, in the last eight of the Champions League, travelling to Barcelona and declaring, as their coach Niko Kovac did yesterday, that “we came here to win”. He has, it transpires, a cunning plan: “They have a lot of strengths but every opponent has weaknesses and we want to use them,” Kovac said. “It would not be wise to say what we have planned but we have an idea.”
Barcelona have played 22 games so far in 2025 and have lost none of them. They have at some stage been winning every one, even if they have been pegged back to draw four of them. They top La Liga and have a Copa Del Rey final to look forward to later this month. Their biggest worry would appear to be overconfidence. “Dortmund have a lot of classy players and they are in the quarters for a reason,” insists Hansi Flick, their Swabian coach. Well, we’ll see about that.
Welcome!
