Kounde, Araujo, Balde, Christensen, Alonso and several other players including Inigo Martinez will work together well to keep Barcelona defense area solid. Xavi will utilize quality players in his squad to maintain the form they showed in La Liga last season to go further in the UCL.
This is a poor defense when it comes to the champion league, can this defense stand against the Newcastle defense of last season (that are now going to play in the champions league). Barcelona isn't going to be among my pick for the tittle. They might just go out of the competition at an earlier stage and go to the Europa league as they did last season. The first have to show that they can win the Europa league before they should be thinking about winning the champions league. Them winning their league isn't a big deal, clubs are scared of them in La Liga but not the champions league as everyone wants to show their power in the champions league.
I don't see Barcelona winning the Champions League because the rating of their performance last season is very low. Even winning La Liga is luck to me because Real Madrid's attention was all on the Champions League and to some extent Madrid is also not serious, they played well during the first League against Manchester City and second leg i wonder what happened and they were clear beating by the city to qualify for the finals, I believe Barcelona should stick to La Liga since the Champions League is truly very competitive if you are not prepared, be prepared to dance to your own song outside of the league.
They played well but Manchester city was just too good for them and also Pep Guardiola didn't allow his overthinking to make him to makes the type of mistakes he usually does in big games like that. The Manchester city teams were focus and they were determined to win, the Manchester city team were just superior this time around. They had the likes of Kevin de bruyne, Bernardo silver, Foden etc. The Manchester city squad had a lot of providers in their prime but Real Madrid had only old players that couldn't stand toe to toe with Manchester city. Manchester city had the most informed striker (although he didn't have much impact to the game) but his presence does a lot of damage to the opponents.