Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Mike Phelan were at Camp Nou on Saturday night to watch Barcelona beat Atletico Madrid 2-0, with late goals by Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi. The goals were spectacular, and the win effectively sealed Barcelona's 10th league title since Messi made his debut in 2005.
But what they saw will have convinced them that United have a chance.
Because this match was a lot closer than the scoreline made it look. Atleti had Diego Costa sent off after 28 minutes for swearing at the referee – “I shit on your whore mother” is apparently acceptable in Spanish football when uttered as a general expression of dissatisfaction, but not when you shout it directly into the referee’s face.
Red cards against Barcelona used to mean almost certain defeat. A team that lost a player against the peak Guardiola-era Barcelona of 2010-11 would struggle to touch the ball again. But Barcelona are different now.
It’s not that they lacked quality, or struggled to create chances against the 10 men. Messi put Jordi Alba through one-on-one with an incredible 40-yard pass, and Philippe Coutinho broke through at the edge of the box only to see Jan Oblak save his weak shot. Barcelona finished with 10 shots on target, which is generally enough to win any game comfortably.
The thing that will have interested Solskjaer and Phelan is how many little glimpses of hope Barcelona gave up to Atletico even though they had an extra man for most of the match. For all their statistical superiority, they never quite gave the impression they had this match under control.
So unconvincing were they, in fact, that Atletico Madrid manager Diego Simeone decided to replace his left-back Felipe Luis with striker Alvaro Morata and switch to 4-3-2 with 32 minutes still to play. It looked a risky move at that point of the match, but Simeone did it both because he knew he needed to win, and because he sensed the door was open if Atleti could just give it a push.
Curling shot
And his side looked likely to get at least a draw until the 85th minute, when Suarez scored the winner out of nothing with a sensational curling shot from outside the box. A minute later Messi made it two with a typically brilliant goal, dummying a couple of shots to the far corner before passing it into the unguarded near side.
But it was individual rather than team or tactical quality that had won the game for Barcelona, and this is what Solskjaer and Phelan will have found so encouraging.
Yet if activity is slightly down, efficiency is way up. He is shooting and scoring even more than he did that year
If the Guardiola Barcelona combined a group of great players with the most sophisticated tactical plan in the sport, the current team is just a group of great and not-so-great players. There is nothing really special or distinctive about Barcelona’s play any more: a decade ago they were reinventing the game, now they are just a normal rich team who happen to have the best player in the world.
The Guardiola team was set up so that Xavi, Busquets and Iniesta made the play in midfield and Messi provided the cutting edge. Now Messi has to do both jobs, so Barcelona are lucky that he remains the best player in the world by some distance.
He remains the best even though he is no longer the same player he was in the Guardiola era. It’s obvious that he has lost some of the speed he once had. You can see that he doesn’t escape from defenders quite as effortlessly as before, and overall he’s dribbling nearly a third less than he did in the 2011 season.
Yet if activity is slightly down, efficiency is way up. He is shooting and scoring even more than he did that year – with 33 league goals he has six more than any other player in the top five leagues, and only Jadon Sancho has more league assists. This is the 10th season in a row that he has scored more than 40 goals.
Perfection
While he no longer tears past two or three defenders on a regular basis he has improved and refined other facets of his game. He has honed his free-kick technique to an almost absurd degree of perfection, scoring 10 goals direct from free kicks in the 2018 calendar year, compared to two penalties.
When Messi has an off-night, as he did in the quarter-final second leg away to Roma, it turns out that Barcelona can be beaten rather easily
He makes about 20 per cent fewer passes than he did in 2011, which reflects the fact that Barcelona don’t dominate possession as much as they did under Guardiola, but these passes include almost three times as many long balls, as Messi more often drops into midfield to create from deep positions.
The era of galactico signings that began with Neymar in 2013 was supposed to reduce what was spoken of as “Messidependencia” – the overreliance on Messi that became especially obvious in 2012, the year in which he scored a world-record 91 goals in 69 games. Yet Messi’s status relative to his team-mates has only become more exalted as the years have passed.
Neymar, once the anointed successor, got tired of waiting and demoted himself with that ill-fated move to Paris; he has not yet been properly replaced. Ousmane Dembele keeps getting injured, while Philippe Coutinho has played as though he feels himself unworthy of the stage.
In December 2017, Pep Guardiola was asked who he thought were favourites to win that season’s Champions League. “Who does Messi play for?” he replied. “Barcelona? Then they are the favourites.”
But Pep was wrong, because when Messi has an off-night, as he did in the quarter-final second leg away to Roma, it turns out that Barcelona can be beaten rather easily.
A side that consistently controls and dominates games is more intimidating than one that produces many flashes of individual brilliance. That's why Manchester City, not Barcelona, are the general favourites to win this year's Champions League – City, who don't have any individual on Messi's level, but who control and dominate games better than any other side in Europe. When City are playing well their opponents feel like powerless spectators. Pep's Barcelona did that to opponents too, not least against Manchester United in the finals of 2009 and 2011. But this Barcelona always let you feel like there might just be light at the end of the tunnel.
The hard part for this relatively inexperienced Manchester United side will be keeping their heads at a level of competition they’re no longer used to. But if they can stay in the game the chances will come.
