FC Barcelona can reach a huge landmark in the Champions League by beating Shakhtar Donetsk.
FC Barcelona can reach a huge landmark in the Champions League by beating Shakhtar Donetsk at the Montjuic Stadium on Wednesday.
The Blaugrana currently nurse a 100% record at the top of __ after wins over Royal Antwerp and Porto.
By also topping their Ukrainian foes in Catalonia this week, Xavi Hernandez’s men will have one foot in the knockout stages after back-to-back failures to reach the knockout phases in Europe’s elite club competition, which has seen them demoted to the Europa League where further disappointment followed.
Barca are severely depleted for the fixture, which is particularly worrying with El Clasico against Real Madrid on the horizon on Saturday where they will be unable to call on the likes of Pedri, Robert Lewandowski, Frenkie de Jong and Raphinha for a tie that could decide where the La Liga title ends up come late May.
Before that, though, Barca must focus on the task at hand on the continent. By picking up three points for the third time in the UCL, they will also reach a huge landmark.
This is because winning will grant the Blaugrana a 200th victory between the European Cup and its modern-day successor the Champions League.
Thus far, they have 199 wins – 26 of which came in the old format of the competition where they played 46 games and 173 in the Champions League where they have run out on 295 occasions for a total of 341.
Barca first made their debut in Europe on September 3, 1959 where they played against local team CDNA Sofia in Bulgaria.
As the match ended in a 2-2 draw, they had to wait until the 23rd of that month for their first triumph in continental competition when beating the Bulgarians 6-2 to advance to the next round.
Unable to go all the way in that edition, however, they were turfed out by bitter rivals Real Madrid in the semi-finals.
As we know, Barca had to wait patiently until 1992 to conquer Europe for the first time when the tournament had already changed to the Champions League.
From Ronald Koeman’s free kick ending Sampdoria’s dreams at Wembley, glory a lot closer together followed in 2006, 2009, 2011 and 2015.