Eight years on and Messi still haunts United
It was the absence of the remotest complaint from Lionel Messi when Manchester United finally laid a glove on him that encapsulated the gulf between them.
It had taken every ounce of effort Chris smalling could muster to barge unceremoniously in front of him and get a chest on a ball that the architect of this victory was about to take down. smalling’s trailing arm struck Messi in the face and for a moment he just sat there, staring into space, dabbing the blood that had gathered on his left eyelid and was running from his nose.
there was a kind of nonchalance about that moment and the Englishman’s protestations of innocence were half-hearted at best. ‘Bring it on,’ smalling had said on the eve of this match. words which signified little when Messi materialised in front of him.
Manchester United had reasons to believe that Messi would be out of their sight by now. when Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona submitted them to a mesmerising display in the 2011 Champions League final at wembley — the 3-1 scoreline barely did them justice that day — sir alex Ferguson took comfort in the fact that he would not be around for ever. ‘How long it lasts,’ was the question, he reflected in the aftermath. ‘whether Barcelona can replace that team at some point. It’s always difficult to find players like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi all the time, [so] probably not…’
well, the last of that triumvirate is still here. this was not quite his vintage. the influence waned after he dominated the decisive first half. the chasm between the sides was not as great as the one that Ferguson discovered on that May night in London. Not the same carousel which left the great man wondering how he would find a way. But it was still Catalonian football on a higher plane.
You sensed that it might be a night when Luis suarez, discovering peak form as Barcelona have all but clinched the La Liga title, might exact revenge for the visceral hate felt for him in these parts since the Patrice Evra episode of eight years ago, which saw him found guilty of racial abuse.
the goal came from his angular header and delivered a kind of reckoning. It revealed that, at 32, suarez now offers a different kind of threat. More deadly finishing, less of the bulldozing, physical runs into the box which served Liverpool so well, even though his shot into the side-netting really should have seen the tie out.
But Messi provided all the majesty where that opening strike was concerned. almost imperceptible was the casual walk out right which dragged Luke shaw out of position. then came the sprint into the area — shaw trailing in his wake — to take down sergio Busquets’ lofted ball. the glance across the six-yard box. the shift in the centre of gravity to measure the ball which the Uruguayan simply leant into, the ball going into the net with the help of a deflection off shaw’s shoulder.
Ole Gunnar solskjaer’s players were certainly primed to deal with Messi. scott Mctominay and Fred, both among the positives United can take, were glued to him in the game’s early stages. the anxiety when one player was left to cope alone was evident. shaw reverted to man-handling Messi, earning a booking which means he misses the return.
Messi’s heat maps revealed his presence all over the pitch, bearing out the sense that this is an individual wanting to make up some of the ground lost to Cristiano Ronaldo during Barcelona’s relatively bleak last few Champions League years. the team have not gone beyond the quarter-final stage since winning the competition in 2015 and he has failed to score in any of his past 11 Champions League quarter-final legs.
He covered parts of the field that the world’s outstanding creative players are not supposed to reach. at full-time, he was scrapping with shaw on United’s left.
If there is a hope for United, who now require a repeat of what they have achieved in turin and Paris on their journey to this stage, it resides in Barca’s defensive vulnerability, which they could exploit from wide areas. their failure to strike one ball on target was unforgivable against a visiting side who gave them moments of hope. Clement Lenglet walked the ball out of defence straight into four red shirts.
It cannot be sacrilegious to say that Busquets is a player they can exploit. From his rash early challenges on Mctominay, to the poor control which forced him to hold Pogba and be booked, he did not look comfortable.
But Messi did. For moments, the shiny, shallow apparatus of football evaporated and we were left the unalloyed, brilliant, simplicity of a player with ball at his feet, navigating it wherever he chose.
“His heat maps revealed his presence all over the pitch”