Barcelona 4 - Bayern Munich 0


To be reminded of how traditionally significant the concept of EU supremacy is to the Catalan capital and its principal soccer club, you need simply glance at something as everyday as a multi-storey auto park. Now the road leads to Rome and, driven by Josep Guardiola, who patrolled Johan Cruyff's midfield in London seventeen years back but was concluding his career as a player with relegation in Mexico when Barcelona repeated the accomplishment under Frank Rijkaard in Paris in 2006, Barcelona are purring along like the final soccer machine.

A way to describe this performance in the 1st leg of their Champs League quarter-final at the Nou Camp? Hard though we should try avoiding the word "awesome" these days, there are times when no other is worth the search.


Barcelona were all but irresistible in a first half during which 2 goals from the soccer genius that is Lionel Messi and one each from Samuel Eto'o and Thierry Henry most scheduled a semi-final place against Chelsea or, if the tradition of Istanbul can be summoned, Liverpool. From the start, Guardiola's guarantee of a typhoon of aggression was kept : with just over twenty mins gone, Barcelona hadn't only scored a couple of times with training-ground coolness, Eto'o letting Messi roll the ball softly into the net before the favour was returned, but Henry had missed 2 clear possibilities.


The Barcelona coach thought that his team should also have received a penalty and was told to sit and shut up by Howard Webb, the British referee, after an especially vehement protest to Martin Atkinson, the 4th official, against a yellow card issued to Messi for diving. It had been a call both brave and controversial. It wasn't as if Bayern were suffering for Jrgen Klinsmann's guarantee to battle fire with fire ; they could barely get a hint of the ball, not to mention start an attack, and before half-time had conceded two more goals.



"The way to get back on track is focus on the Bundesliga with the intention of qualifying for the Champs League next season and, hopefully, competing better than we probably did tonight," he revealed.
In the second half, Barcelona selected their moments to flood forward.
But we shall all be ready to judge Guardiola's side shortly enough.