Barcelona 2020/21 review: End of season report card for chaotic Blaugrana

So...Barcelona's 2020/21 season... yeah.

Lionel Messi's transfer request last summer was the perfect precursor to a season which saw Barcelona struggle from start to finish, with uncertainty around both the manager and the president only adding to the fun.

Oh, and there was the small matter of Barcelona genuinely pushing for a spot in the Super League. That was fun too.

Let's break down Barcelona's season.

League performance

La Liga - 3rd

An atrocious start to the season looked to have Barcelona out of the title race before things had even got started. They were in a top four battle at the turn of the year, which is abysmal for a team of this stature.

However, we then had a massive upturn in form which saw Barcelona turn into favourites to win the whole thing. Messi rediscovered his mojo and fired Ronald Koeman's side to 12 wins and a draw in 13 games, and despite a 2-1 loss to Real Madrid in April, it looked like Barcelona could still go on to win the trophy.

By the time May arrived, Barcelona were already celebrating winning the title. Messi's COVID-breaching barbecue hosted chants of 'campeones, campeones'... after which things went wrong immediately.

A goalless draw with Atletico Madrid saw them lose the advantage they felt they had, before a 3-3 draw with Levante and a 2-1 loss to Celta Vigo officially eliminated Barcelona from the title race. Eight days after calling themselves champions, they were cooked.

It's a run which told us pretty much everything we needed to know about Barcelona. They're a solid team with some great players, but there are some major, major problems which need to be solved before they're going to be genuinely competitive again.

Everything is made infinitely worse by the fact the driving force behind Atletico's success, Luis Suarez, was unceremoniously pushed out Camp Nou because he was too old and rubbish. Barcelona literally handed Atleti the title on a silver platter.

Domestic cup performance

Copa del Rey - winners

A rare glimmer of positivity in Barcelona's season came as they lifted the Copa del Rey trophy in April, but things didn't look like they were going to end up that way early on.

Koeman's side needed extra-time to get past third-tier side Cornella in the third round, before scraping past Rayo Vallecano and needing another extra-time period to squeeze through Granada in the quarter-final. It was all pretty ugly.

It looked like Barcelona would be put out of their misery in the semi-final when Sevilla thumped them 2-0 in the first leg, but to Koeman's credit, a smart change in formation led to an impressive 3-0 victory in the return fixture and booked them a spot in the final against Athletic Club.

Sticking with the same three-man defence, Barcelona romped to victory with a 4-0 mauling, with all four goals coming in a 12-minute period in the second half. It was pretty emphatic and you've got to give credit where it's due.

Supercopa - runners up

The Copa del Rey victory over Athletic helped avenge the defeat to the Basque side in the Supercopa final in January.

At the world's most pointless domestic tournament, Barcelona needed penalties to get through Real Sociedad in the semi-final and felt they were favourites to win the whole thing and deliver Koeman his first trophy, but another meltdown got in the way of that.

Despite two goals from Antoine Griezmann, Barcelona were second best throughout and were taken to extra-time, where Athletic bagged an early goal and Messi was shown a straight red for violent conduct.

It was bad.

Continental cup performance

Champions League - last 16

Barcelona looked deceptively impressive in the group stage of the Champions League, stomping Ferencvaros and Dynamo Kyiv and picking up a 2-0 win over a Juventus side deep in their own nightmare.

With top spot in the group on the line on the final day against Juve, Barcelona were emphatically pumped 3-0 and resigned to a last 16 tie against old rivals Paris Saint-Germain, who were keen to avenge the humiliation of La Remontada from that stage four years ago... and that's exactly what happened.

Kylian Mbappe rocked up to Camp Nou and walked away with the match ball after bagging a hat-trick in a 4-1 victory which meant the tie was over before the second leg even arrived.

The three-at-the-back formation helped Barcelona avoid any further humiliation with a 1-1 draw in the return leg, but the damage was already done and the disparity between a genuine contender and a fallen giant was abundantly clear.

Best player

Hmm, this is a tricky one. Do we go with Marc-Andre ter Stegen, the goalkeeper who hasn't looked like himself all year? How about Gerard Pique, the veteran centre-back who was plagued by injuries? Antoine Griezmann, the £108m forward who proved he's not completely useless this season?

Or shall we go with Messi, the man who singlehandedly carried the team and was directly responsible for any semblance of success the team experienced?

Yeah, let's go with Lionel Messi.

He walked away with 38 goals and 14 assists from 47 appearances in all competitions (club highs in both stats), despite not actually wanting to play football until about December.

Worst player

Here's an actual debate. There are a lot of players who deserve a mention here.

Sergio Busquets took far too long to get going, and at the back, neither Clement Lenglet nor Ter Stegen have looked remotely good enough for a team who carry themselves like the greatest on the planet.

However, none of them have wasted the year quite like Miralem Pjanic. Supposedly an elite midfielder worth trading for exciting youngster Arthur, the Bosnian has been as ineffective as anyone with eyes would have predicted, and his time at Camp Nou is surely over.

The manager

Brought in to steady the ship, Koeman has simultaneously exceeded and failed to live up to expectations this year.

The Dutchman can't be exclusively blamed for the team's poor performances. After all, he did inherit the football equivalent of a bird that has been hit by a car and needs putting out of its misery.

In fact, he does deserve credit for getting Barcelona back to their basics. He brought big performances out of academy kids like Ronald Araujo, Oscar Mingueza, Riqui Puig and Ilaix Moriba, all while helping Messi, Griezmann, Ousmane Dembele and Frenkie de Jong out of their respective funks.

He might not get the chance to finish his work, but if he does go this summer, he'll leave Barcelona in a hell of a better state than he found them in...assuming his work to convince Messi to stay pays off.

Overall grade

It's been a rough year for Barcelona. If you're going to fight the entire continent because you believe you're too good for the rest of the world, you probably need more than a hard-fought Copa del Rey victory to back you up.

There have been some obvious positives, but in no way do they even come close to outweighing the negatives. This will forever be remembered as an awful year for Barcelona, and rightly so.

Grade: D-