Champions League group of death: Bayern, Barcelona, Inter and Viktoria Plzen make up Group C’s killer quartet

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“Terrible group” was a rough translation of one Spanish newspaper’s assessment of Barcelona’s Champions League draw, reacting as Xavi’s project – complete with straining economic levers and hot-off-the-press player registrations – drew Bayern Munich and Inter Milan in Group C.

Barca have a lot to thank Yaya Toure for, and this ceremony will not go down as one of them. The man who won the Champions League at Camp Nou as a teammate of Xavi in 2009 might have left the manager of his old team wishing the pots could be redrawn as he tries to plot a path to the knockout stages in his first full season among the European elite.

Robert Lewandowski’s Bayern departure was a surprisingly acrimonious one for a player who scored 344 goals in 374 appearances for the 2019-20 Champions League winners. “Politics and bulls***” was how the FIFA Men’s Best Player described his final days with the dominant force in the Bundesliga, and his chances of making them pay when he returns with the club he had flirted with for so long will depend on how cohesive Xavi can make his squad between now and September.

Bayern have routinely exceeded the sum of their parts in a style Xavi would love to emulate. When they humiliated a Barca side containing Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez up front and the likes of Gerard Pique, Frenkie de Jong and Sergio Busquets elsewhere on the pitch in the 2020 quarterfinals, it felt like their victims were being vividly shown all the collective qualities they lacked and enduring their lowest point. The only surprise was how much worse matters became, losing Messi and playing out a tame Europa League campaign last season after being bundled out of the Champions League via two 3-0 defeats to Bayern.

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Forebodingly for Xavi, Bayern do not appear to have skipped a beat since the loss of the player whose goals some felt were irreplaceable. Sadio Mane has scored four times in four games since, leaving Liverpool fans to lament his absence, and the forward has only been one star of the show as Jamal Musiala, Thomas Muller, Serge Gnabry, Matthijs de Ligt and Joshua Kimmich have been among those helping Julian Nagelsmann’s team to score 15 times in their first three league games.

Nagelsmann has a point to prove after two displays of tactical brilliance from Unai Emery allowed Villarreal to knock his team out at the quarterfinal stage last season, and a Barcelona squad with attacking options such as Raphinha, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Ferran Torres, Gavi and Ousmane Dembele will test his side, not to mention an Inter Milan team enhanced by Romelu Lukaku once more.

Loaned from Chelsea for the season after a miserable interlude at Stamford Bridge following his Scudetto win with Inter in 2021, Lukaku is leading the line alongside Lautaro Martinez, who scored 25 goals in all competitions last season as the Nerazzurri missed out on the Scudetto by two points to Milan.

Inter have lost once in their last 20 matches – a late defeat at Bologna in April that cost them the title – and look increasingly serene under Simone Inzaghi. In his first season in charge, Inzaghi led them to a victory at Anfield in the second leg of their round of 16 tie, ending Liverpool’s seven-match winning run in the Champions League at the time but finding themselves hampered by a red card for Alexis Sanchez two minutes after they scored.

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Hakan Calhanoglu’s incisive link-up play, allied with the speed of midfielders Nicolo Barella and Denzel Dumfries in Inzaghi’s fluid 3-5-2 system, will cause Barcelona problems if they are disjointed. Bayern, too, should not expect a repeat of their perfect group stage of 2022-23, although the club accounting for six of the 14 occasions on which these three teams have won the competition are the undoubted favourites to finish top.

It felt obligatory when Manuel Neuer, Bayern’s captain, remembered to say that Viktoria Plzen were not to be underestimated when he was asked for his reaction to the draw. Plzen finished second in the regular season in the 2021-22 Czech First League but became champions by winning the Championship Group round that splits the top six teams from the rest after 30 games.

This is a huge step up from their unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the Europa Conference League last season, and their manager – former Czech Republic coach Michael Bilek – will not mind the expectations for his side switching from modest to minute during the draw.

Plzen knocked out Sheriff Tiraspol in qualifying, and the Moldovan side’s stunning result against Real Madrid last season, beating the eventual champions 2-1 on Matchday 2, must be a source of inspiration as they look to repeat their best upset in the Champions League — a victory over Roma in the group stage in December 2018.

Six-time domestic champions in the last 12 years, Plzen have avoided defeat in five of the nine matches they have played at home at this stage of the Champions League. If the group is tight, dropped points at the 11,700-capacity Doosan Arena could prove deadly to their illustrious visitors’ ambitions of advancing.

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