Who can stop Barcelona ruling Europe again?
The only thing that can stop Barcelona is Barcelona. That’s the verdict of Italy’s anyway.
Already two goals up on Arsenal, and eight points ahead in La Liga, with the most deadly three-man attack in football, they must be favourites to make history by becoming the first club to win the Champions League two years running.
They warmed up for tomorrow’s last-16 second-leg by swatting Getafe aside with six goals in the first hour on Saturday afternoon.
Arsenal’s nemesis Leo Messi ran the show. Luis Suarez sunned himself on the bench while Neymar scored a couple. Andres Iniesta had a rest for the last half-hour.
The Messi-Suarez-Neymar combination has just passed the century-mark, compared to a mere 75 goals at the same stage last season. Their only weakness seems to be from the penalty spot – 10 scored out of 18 is one record they didn’t want – but in open play they are currently unstoppable.
Arsenal go to Camp Nou in the hope of turning the tie into a contest. More realistically, their aim has to be preventing a rout. They need to keep a clean sheet as well as overcome two away goals.
It is not impossible. Roma missed four good chances before Real Madrid scored last week. And for the record Barcelona do occasionally go down to a heavy defeat at home.
Three years ago against Real Madrid for example, and then a couple of months later against Bayern Munich. But that was with the unfortunate Tito Vilanova in charge and without any of the current front three.
All the same it seems a trifle premature to award the Champions League trophy now, especially as there are still teams in the tournament that have beaten Barcelona in previous years.
They have also been in this position before and fallen short, although it took a volcanic explosion to disrupt their journey to immortality in 2010.
Barca fans still curse the unpronounceable name Eyjafjallajökull and the eruption that obliged the team to travel to Milan by road rather than air. Fate was once more against them two years later. The mystery perhaps is why no club has managed to retain the European title since Arrigo Sacchi’s extraordinary Milan side over a quarter of a century ago.
That team rewrote the records for unbeatability, but even then it was a close call. Milan only beat Red Star Belgrade on penalties on the way to their win in 1989, though they then destroyed Real Madrid with five goals in 50 minutes in the semi-final. The following year they only reached the final on away goals against Bayern.
So even then there was some luck involved and winning back-to-back titles has since seemed too big a task.
Yet curiously this has coincided with an era when clubs such as Manchester United, Juventus, Real Madrid, and Bayern have won multiple league titles. The Premier League is unusual, in that you have to go back as far as 2009 for the last back-to-back winners; elsewhere, it is more frequent.
Moreover, the Champions League is quite unlike tournaments in other sports such as basketball and ice-hockey where back-to-back wins are relatively common. Since 1993, the South American version of the Champions League – the Copa Libertadores – has had 17 different winners compared to 13 in Europe, but Boca Juniors still managed to achieve consecutive titles in 2001.
In general, football is dominated by the mega-rich and has become much less competitive than it was. In 50 years, only four European clubs managed to pull off a domestic double at the same time as the winning the European crown: Celtic, United, Ajax, and PSV.
Yet since 2009, both Bayern and Inter Milan have done it, and Barcelona have done it twice.
A back-to-back Champions League must surely be on the way sooner rather than later.
Bayern and Pep Guardiola are the one obvious obstacle, although they still have to deal with Juventus.
Luis Enrique’s side, playing better and more direct football, could be on the verge of trumping Guardiola’s record. Back in 2009, it seemed that no one would surpass his six-trophy haul. Seven years on an even more impressive landmark may be in sight.
