Barça’s worst in decades: the Atletico disaster by the numbers

Madrid – The opening 45 minutes of Wednesday’s Spanish Cup semi-final first leg will live in infamy for every Barcelona supporter. By the time referee Mateu Lahoz whistled for the interval, Atlético Madrid had turned a high-stakes cup tie into a historical humiliation, leading 4-0 and exposing wounds that statistics show Barça have not suffered in generations.

The nightmare began in the fifth minute when goalkeeper Joan García mis-controlled a routine back-pass, allowing Atlético to pounce for the opener. Antoine Griezmann, Ademola Lookman and Julián Álvarez added further goals inside 33 minutes, forging a four-goal cushion that Barcelona had not faced at the halfway mark of any competitive fixture since a league meeting with Real Madrid in 1953.

Conceding three times in the opening half-hour is equally rare: the last occasion was the 8-2 Champions League debacle against Bayern Munich in August 2020, another evening etched into Catalan football folklore. García, signed to inject fresh competition between the posts, has now committed four errors that led directly to goals across all competitions since the start of last season. Among Spanish-based keepers, only Paulo Gazzaniga (six) has been more generous, while David Soria has matched García’s unwanted tally.

Barça emerged with renewed intent after the restart and thought they had pulled one back, only for a lengthy VAR review to disallow the strike for offside. The second period finished without further scoring, but the damage was done. Inside the Metropolitano, Atlético supporters celebrated as if the trophy itself had been secured, while the Catalans trudged off aware that their path to the final now borders on the miraculous.

Compounding the challenge, center-back Eric received a straight red card in the 85th minute for a professional foul and will be suspended for the return leg on 3 March at Spotify Camp Nou. Barcelona must overturn a four-goal deficit without one of their first-choice defenders, yet the competition’s history offers slim hope: no team has recovered such a margin in the Spanish Cup since the format moved to two-legged ties.

For Xavi Hernández and his squad, the assignment is clear—score early, score often, and keep belief that football’s cup romance still flickers. For the numbers, however, the first-half collapse already belongs to the record books, a stark reminder of how quickly elite sport can turn into a nightmare.