Barcelona breeze into Champions League semi-finals, beat Man. United 3-0

Lionel Messi pounced on two Manchester United mistakes to score twice
and end their hopes of another Camp Nou comeback as Barcelona breezed
into the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday.

Messi and Coutinho

After an excellent start, United were undone twice in four minutes by
Messi, who first nicked the ball off the careless Ashley Young and then
watched as a weak shot from distance squirmed underneath David de Gea.

Philippe Coutinho, in perhaps his best performance of the season,
added a third with a curling effort into the top corner and by the end,
an outclassed United might have been relieved the score was not more
traumatic than 3-0, 4-0 on aggregate.

A dizzying opening spell, in which Marcus Rashford had hit the
crossbar, was long-forgotten, even if it could offer Barcelona’s next
opponents some encouragement.

Liverpool, who take a 2-0 lead to Porto on Wednesday, are the most
likely obstacle between Barca and their first Champions League final
since they last won this tournament in 2015. Mohamed Salah and Sadio
Mane might feel encouraged.

Instead, United’s pair of early errors made this another night about
Messi and ensured any faint hopes of repeating the comeback against
Paris Saint-Germain, or even the famous 1999 rescue act against Bayern
Munich, on this same pitch, were dashed.

Messi now has his 109th and 110th Champions League goals and,
potentially, three extra matches to reduce the gap on Cristiano
Ronaldo’s 126, after Juventus were dumped out by Ajax. Barcelona’s fans
celebrated that too.

United’s coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had urged his strikers to be more
lethal here but it felt ominous that even before kick-off, Rashford,
Anthony Martial, Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Sanchez had hit 42 goals this
season, while Messi on his own had 43.

Around an hour before kick-off, Alex Ferguson was on the side of the
pitch, shaking hands with Ryan Giggs and sharing words with Solskjaer,
the scorer of that goal against Munich here 20 years ago.

They could have hardly have asked for a better start. United were
brilliant for eight minutes and could have been ahead within 30 seconds
as Rashford raced onto a curving Paul Pogba pass and toed away a shot,
which Marc-Andre ter Stegen bravely left to graze his own crossbar.

Barca were flustered, so much so the crowd even cheered with relief when Arthur Melo played his team’s first convincing pass.

Then, Barcelona had their own eight-minute flurry as United almost
conceded a penalty, ruled out after Fred took the ball before bringing
down Ivan Rakitic, and then did concede, twice, to Messi.

Both could have been avoided, even if Young’s turn on the edge of his
own box was punished in devastating fashion. Young lunged in to atone
for his mistake but Messi skipped away from him, poked it through Fred’s
legs and then whipped the ball past into the corner.