Four-midable Messi era has truly arrived

TWO things we learned from last night’s action in the Nou Camp: don’t score first against Barcelona ‘cos you’ll only annoy them and, if Best was the most perfect name in football, Messi must be the most inapt.

Last week, we got an hour-long masterclass in team play at the Emirates. Last night, we got a solo tutorial, four goals from the world’s greatest player that left Arsenal not just beaten but bewitched and bewildered. Or, if you prefer footballing vernacular, battered – though that’s hardly the Barcelona way of putting opposition to the sword.

The blistering first might have had a little touch of fortune in the build-up except that you can’t help thinking that, like they used to say about Pele, Messi wouldn’t rule out playing a one-two off an opponent. The second was clinical, the third was audacious and the fourth, even if it required a second bite of the cherry, showed why many reckon the 22-year-old might yet eclipse Maradona.

The absence through suspension of centre-halves Carles Poyol and Gerard Pique was, at least in theory, supposed to give Arsenal grounds for believing that they could “get at” Barcelona. But this was rather to overlook the fact that, for last year’s final against Manchester United in Rome, Pep Guardiola had been obliged to reshuffle three of his preferred back four, something which proved a minor problem only in the opening, slightly nervy 10 minutes of that game and which, thereafter, was rendered entirely academic as the traffic proceeded to go all the other way.

In short, to get at Barcelona, you must first get hold of the ball – and that, as we know, is not something the Catalans are inclined to give away lightly, if at all. By contrast, without even a hobbling Cesc Fabregas to exert a measure of control or Andrei Arshavin to provide a touch of the unpredictable, Arsenal were always likely to feel the loss of their absentees more keenly than their opponents.

Yet, to their credit, Arsene Wenger’s team put home side under real pressure all over the pitch in the opening stages and were rewarded with the Bendtner goal which, for all of three minutes, gave them reason to believe.

But then the irresistible Messi took centre stage and Arsenal had no answer to his brilliance – least of all in the fleet-of-foot but slow-of-thought Theo Walcott. And lest anyone think Barca are a one-man band, there was the sight of everything going through Xavi in the middle of the park and, in the unlikely event of Jose Mourinho underestimating what lies ahead for his Inter Milan, the return to action late on of the equally influential Iniesta.

So it’s another story of so near and yet so far for Arsenal. And for Gunners, read the Premier League in general, For all that English clubs have dominated the business end of the Champions’ League in recent years, the trophy has actually only ended up in Blighty twice in this millennium – first, when Liverpool turned all football logic on its head in Istanbul in 2005 and then when Manchester United edged out Chelsea on penalties in Moscow three years later.

Last year in Rome confirmed that the putative ‘best league in the world’ was not home to the best team in Europe, a verdict underlined yet again by Barca in the Camp Nou last night (Yep, that’s the Nou Camp – so good they named it both ways).

At least the champions of England are still in it although, as usual, they will have to do it the hard way against Bayern Munich in Old Trafford tonight. And should United fail, it will mean no English representation in the semi-finals of the Champions League for the first time in eight years. And even if United do succeed, it looks like it will take something extraordinary to prevent Messi and Barca rubbing salt in the wounds of domestic as well as international rivals when the final takes place next month in Madrid.