PSG and Barcelona are now the favourites to win the Champions League, but in losing their respective quarter-final second legs, they both showed their flaws.
Heading into Tuesday’s Champions League quarter-final second legs, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona had been looking – almost literally – unbeatable.
PSG had lost only once – at home to Liverpool in a game they dominated from start to finish – in their last 30 games in all competitions, a run stretching back to late November.
Barcelona hadn’t lost at all in their first 24 matches of 2025, including facing Atlético Madrid three times and Real Madrid once.
They also both went into the return games of their respective quarter-finals with healthy first-leg advantages. PSG had beaten Aston Villa 3-1 in Paris last week, while Barcelona won 4-0 at home to Borussia Dortmund.
Each tie was as good as over, and the Opta supercomputer agreed. In 10,000 simulations of the games that it ran just before kick-off on Tuesday, PSG advanced 91.5% of the time and Barcelona 99.4%. Such was their superiority, there was almost no way back for their opponents.
The Opta supercomputer gives Barcelona a 99.4% chance of getting past Borussia Dortmund. PSG have a 91.5% chance of seeing off Aston Villa.Are tonight's two #ucl quarter-final ties already over? pic.twitter.com/TAIdgePFls
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) April 15, 2025In the end, the supercomputer was proven correct. Both teams made it through and both are still in with a chance of winning the treble this season. They are two of Europe’s best teams and have rightly long been considered big contenders to win this season’s Champions League. At the time of writing, they are the supercomputer’s favourites.
But neither side came through their quarter-final unscathed. They both lost their second-leg fixtures and scraped into the semis in far less convincing manners than anyone – or indeed the supercomputer – could say they expected.
PSG threw away a 2-0 lead on the night at Villa Park to lose 3-2, in the process very, very nearly giving up a 5-1 aggregate lead with two-thirds of the tie played. It was the first time they had failed to win a Champions League game despite leading by 2+ goals since March 2001 (a 4-3 loss vs Deportivo La Coruña), having won 56 successive such matches prior to this game.
They shipped three goals in the space of 23 minutes to a Villa side who have averaged 1.7 goals per game in all competitions this season. Villa had more touches in the opposition’s box (39) than in any other Champions League game this season, and it would have been one more had Ezri Konsa connected with his attempted header from point-blank range with the hosts chasing an aggregate equaliser.
PSG also had goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma to thank for three vital saves late on to deny Marcus Rashford, Youri Tielemans and Marco Asensio. Villa had more than enough opportunities to win the tie.
The Ligue 1 champions appeared to struggle in particular with Villa’s direct running and dribbling. Rashford, selected ahead of Ollie Watkins presumably for his ball-carrying ability, attempted nine dribbles – his highest tally in any club game since April 2021 – and caused all sorts of problems.
PSG played with a high line and looked uncomfortable when Villa ran at them. Even when John McGinn, who is hardly known for his pace or dribbling ability, charged through the middle of the pitch, the PSG defence just backed off and backed off until McGinn fired in Villa’s second goal.
Overall, PSG produced a performance that was nowhere near the assured, controlled and dominant display or result that their recent form – and their display in the first leg – suggested it was going to be. They ended up going through with a 5-4 aggregate win, but it was much, much nervier than they would have wanted.
Barcelona, meanwhile, never saw their aggregate lead reduced to a single goal, but they were arguably even less convincing.
They were dominated from start to finish in their second leg at Signal Iduna Park, with Dortmund racking up 11 shots on target – their best in any Champions League knockout game on record (since 2003-04) – and a quite remarkable xG total of 3.81. Barcelona managed just 0.49 xG, and even the goal they scored was a fortuitous own goal from Dortmund defender Ramy Bensebaini.
The difference in their xG totals of 3.32 was the greatest at this stage or later of the competition in any season for which xG numbers are available (since 2012-13). This was dominance unseen in a Champions League quarter-final at any point in the past decade.
Dortmund have improved under Nico Kovac of late, but they remain eighth in the Bundesliga, and Barcelona manager Hansi Flick won’t have been pleased with his team’s meek performance against a team they expected to beat. It was the first time Barcelona had ever lost a match to Dortmund.
On an error-strewn night for Barcelona, Serhou Guirassy scored three opportunistic goals that the Spanish side could have done more to prevent. First, Wojciech Szczesny conceded a penalty that Guirassy converted. Then, some poor marking at a corner allowed the Guinean forward to head in from close range. Finally, an attempted clearance from Ronald Araujo went only as far as Guirassy, who took the invitation to complete his hat-trick.
There was plenty for Barcelona’s semi-final opponents – either Inter or Bayern Munich – to get excited about. Their performance was so unconvincing that their chances of winning the Champions League, according to the Opta supercomputer, actually decreased from 28.2% 27.4% despite them progressing to the semi-finals.
That drop is understandable given this was a display that proved Barcelona are beatable.
Meanwhile, Arsenal or Real Madrid, one of whom will face PSG in the last four, will both have been given the distinct impression that PSG have flaws, too.
There is another way of looking at the two results, though. Ultimately, both second-leg losses were inconsequential. PSG and Barcelona still progressed, and looking shaky defensively when you have a big lead and the opposition feel free to throw everything at you is very different to showing the same issues in a level tie.
Also, and crucially, they didn’t actually throw away their aggregate leads. They just nearly did. Maybe they both deserve credit for showing enough resilience in testing circumstances against opponents who earned their places in the last eight of Europe’s biggest competition and are capable of beating very good teams.
PSG are responsible for the single greatest (or worst?) capitulation in Champions League history – in 2016-17, they won their first leg against Barcelona 4-0 but lost 6-1 at Camp Nou to crash out, in a game now known as La Remontada, or the comeback. It has its own Wikipedia page, and also saw Unai Emery come up against Luis Enrique.
The French side have never won the Champions League, consistently the competition’s nearly men, but perhaps holding off Villa’s fightback after battling past Liverpool on penalties, who were at the time the supercomputer’s favourites, are in fact signs that the ghosts of the comeback have finally been banished.
Barcelona may also take heart that on a night when their usually exceptional forward line faltered, they held out for a two-goal aggregate win.
There’s no question, though, that both teams showed with their second-leg defeats that they are far from perfect. They might be the favourites to win it, but both have weaknesses that their semi-final opponents will have enjoyed seeing.
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PSG and Barcelona’s Night of Fallibility Proves Champions League Is Wide Open Opta Analyst.
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