Barca survives Guirassy hat-trick to advance
Barcelona booked a place in the Champions League semi-finals for the first time in six seasons despite a 3-1 loss to Borussia Dortmund, with a 5-3 aggregate score taking Hansi Flick’s side through.
Serhou Guirassy netted a brilliant hat-trick for Dortmund to condemn Barcelona to its first defeat across all competitions this year, but it wasn’t enough to overturn the Catalans’ commanding 4-0 first-leg advantage at Montjuic.
Despite its impressive performance in the first leg, Barcelona was severely under the pump at Signal Iduna Park.
After a flurry of early half chances across the opening minutes, Dortmund was rewarded with a penalty in the eighth minute as Pascal Gross was taken down by Wojciech Szczesny inside the box.
Guirassy made no mistake from 12 yards out, calmly dinking the ball straight down the middle to open the scoring.
Dortmund thought it had another in quick time as Felix Nmecha and Gross combined to put the ball in the net, but the goal was ruled out for offside.
The host side continued to pile on the pressure, with another series of half-chances across the first half, particularly through impressive performances from Gross and Karim Adeyemi, though Barcelona managed to keep it at bay.
Dortmund continued to persevere and was rewarded for its belief with another goal in the 49th minute, as Guirassy nodded home from Ramy Bensebaini’s flicked pass across the face of goal.
Bensebaini gave Barcelona some breathing room shortly after though, as he turned the ball into his own net from Gerard Martin’s cut-back cross inside the box.
Guirassy completed his hat-trick in the 76th minute to keep Barcelona in a spot of bother as the Guinea international plucked off Ronald Araujo’s clearance to slide the ball past Szczesny.
Julian Brandt had a goal disallowed for offside just three minutes later as Dortmund continued to believe, but with two goals still required to take the game to extra-time, the host side gradually ran out of steam.
Barcelona, meanwhile, will consider itself lucky to have escaped this second leg and Flick will know that it cannot afford such mistakes as it gears up for a semi-final clash against the winner of Inter Milan's quarter-final against Bayern Munich.
