Barcelona visit Monaco 30 years later

Barcelona will visit the Stade Louis II on Thursday, a stadium that has witnessed several victories in the European Super Cup, but which has only hosted the ‘Cules’ on one occasion in the top club competition. April 2024 marked three decades since that single visit to play against a Monaco side who have now earned the right to participate in the Champions League, but who in 1993-94 did so by chance.
The fact is that the meeting between the Principality side and Barcelona never had to be played. The Ligue 1 team had finished 3rd in the French competition in 1992-93 and in those years only the champion could play in the Champions League. A harsh sanction against Olympique de Marseille for match-fixing against Valenciennes and the subsequent resignation of PSG, runners-up that season, led to an offer to Monaco, who accepted the proposal and shared the group stage with FC Barcelona, Spartak Moscow and Galatasaray after beating AEK Athens and Steaua Bucharest in the preliminary rounds.
Barca, who had knocked out Dynamo Kiev and Austria Vienna, needed only a draw on that final day of the group stage to be at home in the bizarre one-off semi-finals scheduled for that year. With a goal from Stoichkov, Johan Cruyff's Barcelona, with Michael Laudrup, Ronald Koeman and Romario among the other foreign stars, clinched first place and hosted Porto at home, while Milan welcomed Monaco to the San Siro.
Like the Portuguese at the Camp Nou (3-0), the team coached by Arsene Wenger and starring Jurgen Klinsmann, Enzo Scifo, Youri Djorkaeff and Lilian Thuram was also overwhelmed by the 'Rossoneri' in Italy (3-0) and Barcelona and Milan met in the unforgettable final in Athens, where Fabio Capello's side defeated Cruyff's legendary ‘Dream Team’.