The little genius changed the gravity of this tie with a piece of classic unforgiving skill to score his first goal against Chelsea, but until then the hosts had been a match for Barcelona
With 11 minutes gone at Stamford Bridge Lionel Messi did his first extraordinary thing, picking up the ball in the centre circle at ambling speed, then flicking the switch on those waddling nitroglycerin jets. Pedro was shrugged away in conventional fashion. N’Golo Kanté was evaded with a jink.
At which point Antonio Rüdiger made the mistake of panicking. Never panic around Messi. He wants you to panic. He smells your panic and runs right into it. As Rüdiger flailed out of the backline Messi didn’t so much dribble round him as glide into a different slipstream so that suddenly – how? – he was behind him, with Rüdiger left whirling and stumbling, just another gif-humiliation, another note in that endless bad-techno YouTube reel of the Messi skill vaults.
Related: Lionel Messi breaks his duck against Chelsea to earn draw for Barcelona
Forget the goals. It was against Chelsea in 2006 that Messi announced himself in England with a brilliant performance in his dribbling-ferret mode
Related: Chelsea’s Antonio Conte: we were close to the perfect game against Barcelona
Continue reading...