Lewandowski activates the Champions League lever as Barça return to the big time

Barcelona needed a game and an opponent like Plzen to return to the Champions League after last season's disaster. From not even being good enough to listen to the anthem, to being eliminated in the Europa League. Laporta and Xavi were anxious to score points in Europe that would be converted into euros to fill the cash box with money from the present and not the future. 

Barça play at a different speed. After a bad time against Rayo Vallecano, nothing was ever the same again. The players are flying and Lewandowski is the best lever the club has been able to activate with eight goals in five games. 

He scored three more against Plzen, but everyone agrees that he gives much more to the club. Advice to the youngsters, movements on the pitch, good vibes in the dressing room...  

Xavi continues to send messages to everyone with his line-up. In the first Champions League match against the weakest team in the group, which probably won't even make it to the Europa League. Piqué was a substitute, Alba was a starter and De Jong is still getting minutes and counting for Xavi. 

In the case of the two Spaniards, both are clear that their role is to play little and in matches of little importance. If they don't want to set the dressing room on fire, they will have to put up with it while they continue to collect their succulent salaries plus the debts that the club has accumulated with them due to salary reductions. 

The other lever is Dembélé. The Frenchman needed Xavi in his life. He has become a rock who doesn't get injured, overflows with purpose and scores goals or provides assists. Dembélé is happy at Barcelona and has earned a late-night phone call to Laporta to promise him titles, as he did with Bartomeu. 

Kessie made his debut in the European goal and Ferran Torres also took the opportunity to remind Xavi that he is a striker and that he is still at the disposal of the club as he was when they signed him in extremis. 

Barcelona's next European destination is Munich. There Bayern awaits as a thermometer of Lewandowski's goalscoring ability against a big club and to bury the ghosts of the past and the defeats suffered.  

Europe gives no respite with matches every week to close the first phase of the competition before the World Cup in Qatar. 

Atletico won in the 100th minute thanks to a goal from the dejected Griezmann. Gio Simeone's Napoli thrashed Liverpool 4-1 to keep them in the final in Paris and Bayern took the game against Inter in Milan 0-2.