As the great Yankees baseballer Yogi Berra might've said...
"It's deja-vu all over again."
Barcelona dealt Manchester United another footballing lesson at Wembley today.
In a virtual carbon copy of their Rome final two years previous, the Catalan giants again demonstrated why many consider this current Barca side, the three-peat La Liga champions, to be the singular best exponents of FIFA's beautiful game on the planet.
United were cruelly exposed, outplayed in every aspect of the match. Just like 2009, when these two first fought for European football's greatest club prize, England's finest were run ragged.
And let's not forget, before Sir Alex Ferguson's mob is completely written off, that this isn't a bad United team either. How could it be having won four of the last five Premier League titles, while (also) good enough to make the Champions League final three of the past four seasons?
Barcelona (aka "the World XI") are simply in a different class making Man Utd, just like they did to big-spending & bitter Spanish rivals Real Madrid in the two-legged semi-final, look decidedly second-rate.
Was it really Ferguson's tactics to so easily concede 70% possession? Did he seriously intend for his team to spend three-quarters of the game embarrassingly "chasing shadows"? Was it actually planned to start the second half by letting the most potent attacking line-up in world football camp on the edge of the penalty box and take non-stop potshots?
Obviously none of that holds true which means, quite scarily, the players he selected for this match were neither capable of containing their opposites, nor skilful enough to wrestle back the advantage and/or successfully impose a will (on the game) of their own.
And before the ABU (Anyone But United) brigade even begin to think another EPL side might've fared differently, or better even, a wee reminder that (next best) Chelsea were themselves comprehensively beaten by Man U in both legs of this year's Champions League quarter-final, with United dishing out similar treatment to Arsenal (next best) in their 2009 semi-final.
Like it or lump it, the Red Devils are (sans argument) the number one team in England.
However, as Sir Alex is more than painfully aware, that alone counts for less-than-diddly when kicking-off against a (club) side boasting seven of the 11 players that won last year's World Cup final for Spain plus the World Footballer of the Year, Lionel Messi. In fact all three finalists for the 2011 award, Xavi/Iniesta/Messi, were in the starting XI for Barca at Wembley.
Those refusing to discard their rose-coloured United spectacles might cling to one (small) positive - at least this time, as opposed to Rome '09, United did manage to score! Problem being, so did Barcelona - three times in fact, with consummate ease, and could've/should've had two-three more.
One of the oldest and most oft-repeated cliches in sport says, "A Champion Team will always beat a Team of Champions."
Sadly for Man United they ran head-long into a Barca side which, quite clearly, is brilliant at being both...
