The Athletic.

Well, the group stages of the Champions League are now over,

and despite pulling various levers,

Barcelona have not qualified for the knockout stages.

What has gone wrong then, and probably more importantly,

what are the financial consequences of being eliminated?

Plus, with other Champions League stalwarts,

Athletico and Juventus, also going out,

does a less predictable Champions League

make for a better competition

and weaken the argument for a European Super League?

I'm Mark Chapman.

This is the Athletic Football Podcast.

Music Mark Chapman, this is the Athletic Football Podcast. I'm joined today by Spanish football journalist Alvara Romeo and the Athletics Oli-K.

Come on to the bigger picture with all these big clubs going out in a little while.

But Alvara, let's start with

Barcelona, um, who, whose financial issues and financial turmoil is presumably going to get

worse because of the elimination. I think that Barcelona's worries are going to get only worse

because the team had budgeted to reach the championship quarter finals because they did a hell of an investment in the summer just making sure or they wanted to make sure that the team was going to be competitive again, which they are at the 13 degree, definitely domestically.

But then in Europe, the team hasn't been up to the challenge, maybe the manager neither.

And this financially will have some repercussions, of course.

I think that it is not unthinkable to predict that Barcelona will try to trigger

...