As the season progressed, Barcelona proved they might be able to win all three competitions and earn another treble. He provided an assist for Arturo Vidal in the 1-0 win over Real Valladolid; with the pass, the striker became the first since Thierry Henry to top twenty goals and twenty assists in a season in the top five leagues in the world. In the semifinal, he scored a 7-0 victory over Valencia, with four goals from Suárez and three from Messi. Barcelona and eliminated the Catalan team in the semi-final of the UEFA Champions League. In the second half, the team returned with the desire to seek the result, betting on Messi on the right, making crosses if they created good chances, but it was on Suárez's skill that the score was reduced to 4×2 after a cut in Boateng. In the medical statement after the game, it was stated that the Barça captain would be in recovery for approximately three weeks; the star missed a few La Liga games, including the first El Clássico of the season. There is often a fierce rivalry between the two strongest teams in a domestic league, and this is particularly the case in La Liga, where the match between Barça and Real Madrid is known as El Clásico.
On December 19, in their most successful year, Barcelona won the title they were missing, the FIFA Club World Cup: after being defeated by the Brazilian teams of São Paulo in 1992 and Internacional in 2006, they beat in overtime, the Argentinean Estudiantes. The team from the capital soon gained strength, starting to dispute the national titles with the blaugranes and, more than that, being successful in the newly created UEFA Champions Cup, winning the first five editions of the tournament, which Barça would only win in 1992. With the success of Real, Franco soon declared himself a fan of the team, and the proximity of the merengue president Santiago Bernabéu with the ruler was notorious. Despite the frustrating elimination in the main competition of the season, Barça managed to re-establish their domestic dominance by winning the Copa del Rey for the fourth consecutive year and lifting another La Liga cup.
The club then had the opportunity to be the first in Spain to win the triple crown: winning the Spanish championship, the King's Cup and the UEFA Champions League in the same season. It was by far the worst season of the "Messi Era", not winning any titles, apart from the Spanish Super Cup which is a title referring to the previous season, Tata Martino's constant bad technical decisions, Messi's injuries and the team's growing problem of reinventing itself. their style of play made this season a great failure the team even saw their biggest rival Real Madrid defeat them in the final and win the King's Cup and of course "La Decima", winning the UEFA Champions League after a fast of twelve years without winning the trophy. The greatest achievement of the decade was the 1974 Brazilian Championship, with Roberto Dinamite becoming top scorer and Vasco da Gama being the first team from Rio de Janeiro to win such competition. He played for Barcelona and, as coach, led Atlético to win the team's first two Spanish titles. The rivalry was maintained even during the long period of Barcelona's lack of titles, which lasted around thirty years, between the early 1960s and 1990s and increased its international expression when the Catalan club returned to achieve a regular sequence of titles, in the 1990s. The rivalry between Real x Barça is considered one of the greatest in the world.
In the 2011-12 season, Barcelona reinforced its squad with the Chilean striker Alexis Sánchez (transferred from Udinese for 37 million euros, with 11 million conditioned on Barcelona's titles), the long-awaited signing of Cesc Fàbregas (transferred from Arsenal for 40 million euros, with 6 million euros conditioned on winning Barcelona titles) and the spectacular development of Thiago Alcântara, a Barcelona B player until then, during Euro-21 (winning by Spain) and the Audi cup (being elected best player of the tournament). The two teams would again decide the same trophy in 2009, now with a certain fraternization of the fans to boo the Marcha Real (Spain's national anthem) and King Juan Carlos, present in the stadium – the Spanish state channel's censorship of the boos would end up causing the resignation of its sports director. Estadio Benito Villamarín is the home stadium of the Spanish football club Real Betis Balompié, located in the city of Seville. Even so, it was only in the mid-1950s that the rivalry really escalated, surrounding the disputed signing of Alfredo Di Stéfano by Real. Barcelona by 2-1, thus, the team advanced to the quarterfinals.