GOAL OF THE CENTURY
BARCELONA 3 CHELSEA 0
100 IT wasn’t the best goal he has ever scored, but this one took Lionel Messi to 100 in the Champions League. It was Messi’s second of the night as Barcelona beat Chelsea 3-0 to reach the quarterfinals 4-1 on aggregate.
THE press box at the Nou Camp is situated high up on the third tier of four, which can make observers feel detached from the football at times.
One of the few advantages of this is that you can often see an opportunity or an angle for a pass before the players can.
Still, though, nobody up in the gods saw the pass that Lionel Messi played to present Ousmane Dembele with the first goal of his Barcelona career last night.
As Messi nudged the ball away from Andreas Christensen and then Cesar Azpilicueta in midfield, Chelsea were drawn towards the danger approaching like a train without any brakes down their right-hand side.
Inevitably, eyes were attracted to the diagonal run made by Luis Suarez across the front of the penalty area too. Certainly that was the direction taken by the covering white shirts, sucked over like magnets on metal.
But only Messi saw the alternative play. Only he seemed to be aware that Dembele was approaching away to his right, dashing forward in the hope, no doubt, of picking up some pieces from the first drive at goal.
So how Messi saw the pass he played — 25 yards away and surely out of the range of his peripheral vision — only he will know. Chelsea were still asking themselves the same thing as Thibaut Courtois collected Dembele’s rising drive from the back of his net.
It would stretch things to say this is the kind of goal only Barcelona can score. Not so, however, that they remain the only team in Europe — and Messi the only player — who do things like this on a regular basis. It remains, at times, truly hypnotic.
We can see plenty of Manchester City in the way that Barcelona play. Of course we can. And we know why. However, the creed that Pep Guardiola is following in Manchester remains one to be refined over the remainder of this season and beyond.
Here in Catalonia, they have been perfecting and repeating this clever, fluid, angular style of football for years and, four coaches on from Guardiola’s time, it shows.
Messi remains at the heart of it all. By scoring his team’s equaliser at Stamford Bridge three weeks ago and striking early here, the Argentine wrote his name through another big European tie.
But he can only function within the system provided and Suarez’s role in the Dembele goal was a good example of that. The former Liverpool player was probably one of only two people in the ground who suspected he would not receive what looked like an obvious pass as he made his run. But he made the run anyway. If he hadn’t, the goal would not have been scored.
Again we draw parallels with City. At the Etihad, there grows a similar sense of selflessness and hard work. Without the work, great teams are left with only fluff. What did for Chelsea here was not fluff, but cold, clinical, dark-eyed execution.
In the stands, they are used to it. Barcelona had conceded only two goals at home in the Champions League before last night in the past two years. And they won one of those two games 6-1.
It is five years, meanwhile, since they conceded twice in one night at the Nou Camp in European competition.
So when Messi struck so early, the goal was greeted with no rapture. This was an important game in a finely balanced tie. But in the minds of the socios of Barcelona, it was not in the balance at all. This was a game that they would win because they always do.
Chelsea were admirably game opponents, might have had a penalty in the second half and did not deserve to lose by three. But the difference was that Barcelona had more gears. We did not see the best of Chelsea defensively but they do not have much more than they showed going forward.
Barcelona on the other hand retain that infuriating and mesmerising — one if you are playing them, the other if you are watching — knack of coasting for long periods and then pressing the button marked turbo.
Never was that more apparent than when they broke to score their decisive third goal.
Last night, Messi and Barcelona simply did what we suspected they might. On planet football, they remain the greatest draw of all.