Lionel Messi pounced on two Manchester United mistakes to score twice and end their hopes of another comeback at Camp Nou as Barcelona breezed into the Champions League semi-finals on Tuesday.
After an excellent start, United were undone twice in fourminutes by Messi, who first nicked the ball off the careless Ashley Young andthen watched as a weak shot from distance squirmed underneath David de Gea.
Philippe Coutinho, in perhaps his best performance of theseason, 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 traumaticthan 3-0, 4-0 on aggregate.
“We had five uncomfortable minutes because they came outstrong,” said Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde. “But then there were another 85minutes where we weren’t bad.” A dizzying opening spell, in which MarcusRashford had hit the crossbar, was long-forgotten, even if it could offerBarca’s next opponents some encouragement.
Liverpool, who take a 2-0 lead to Porto on Wednesday, arenow the most likely obstacle between them and their first Champions Leaguefinal since they last won this tournament in 2015. Mohamed Salah and Sadio Manemight feel emboldened.
Instead, United’s pair of early errors made this anothernight about Messi and ensured any faint hopes of repeating the comeback againstParis Saint-Germain, or even the famous 1999 rescue act against Bayern Munich,on this same pitch, were dashed.
“We said all along this was not going to change overnight,”United’s coach Ole Gunnar Solskjaer said.
“In the next few years it is going to be a massive effort to get to the level of Barcelona and these sorts of teams.” 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.