burstead
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- Jul 24, 2010
- 110
Sky sum it up well today
Mission impossible | Sky Sports | Home | News
"There is no shame in losing to Barcelona. Not when they bring such beautiful football, such wonderful passing and such sumptuous goals to Wembley.
It is no good wrapping up the 2011 UEFA Champions League final as a hard-luck story for Manchester United. It wasn't. Sir Alex Ferguson's side were beaten 3-1. Out-thought, out-passed, out-played and out-classed.
And at the heart of a final which went another step to proving that Barcelona are the greatest club side in the history of the game was the genius that is Lionel Messi.
It was not just the fact that he scored a wonderful goal in the second half, his first goal in his eighth attempt on English soil as a Barcelona player and a strike which was a rapier thrust to United's ambitions.
It was the fact that Messi was at the heart of so many of Barcelona's thrusts on a night which only confirmed his status as the best player in the world.
The best ever? Probably, if only because his lack of ego, his work ethic, his selflessness, his desire to put team above personal glory is so much more developed than his Argentine counterpart Diego Maradona.
Time and again Messi turned and ran at United's defence, causing little detonations of mayhem, prising space, creating danger.
That is tough on the nerves, which is why at the end of a fraught night United captain and centre back Nemanja Vidic had the look of a man who had flown one mission too many".
Mission impossible | Sky Sports | Home | News
"There is no shame in losing to Barcelona. Not when they bring such beautiful football, such wonderful passing and such sumptuous goals to Wembley.
It is no good wrapping up the 2011 UEFA Champions League final as a hard-luck story for Manchester United. It wasn't. Sir Alex Ferguson's side were beaten 3-1. Out-thought, out-passed, out-played and out-classed.
And at the heart of a final which went another step to proving that Barcelona are the greatest club side in the history of the game was the genius that is Lionel Messi.
It was not just the fact that he scored a wonderful goal in the second half, his first goal in his eighth attempt on English soil as a Barcelona player and a strike which was a rapier thrust to United's ambitions.
It was the fact that Messi was at the heart of so many of Barcelona's thrusts on a night which only confirmed his status as the best player in the world.
The best ever? Probably, if only because his lack of ego, his work ethic, his selflessness, his desire to put team above personal glory is so much more developed than his Argentine counterpart Diego Maradona.
Time and again Messi turned and ran at United's defence, causing little detonations of mayhem, prising space, creating danger.
That is tough on the nerves, which is why at the end of a fraught night United captain and centre back Nemanja Vidic had the look of a man who had flown one mission too many".
