Barcelona FC on Tuesday night ended Manchester United’s dream to lift this season’s UEFA Champions League trophy as they suffered humiliating defeat in the quarter-finals held at the Nou Camp.
Though Manchester United started brightly, the humiliation began with a goal from Barca’s striker, Lionel Messi, who maximised a glaring mistake from ManU’s goalkeeper David de Gea to finish them off.
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While Messi scored the first two goals in the 16th and 20th minutes respectively, Philippe Coutinho added a third for Barca in the 61st minute.
ManU’s attempt to score a goal in the 90th minute through Alexis Sanchez’s diving header, was however saved by Barca’s eagle-eyed goalkeeper, Marc Andre ter Stegen.
ManU manager says ‘We have to aspire to get to that level of Barcelona’
While reacting to the game last night, Manchester United manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, said: “I have to say Lionel Messi is top quality and he was the difference of course. At 2-0, it was game over.
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“He’s different class, he and Cristiano Ronaldo are the best players of the last decade, everyone agrees on that one. Messi showed his quality.
“We have to aspire to get to that level of Barcelona, we can get there but we have loads of work to do. If we want to get back to Man Utd’s true level, true traditions, we have to challenge Barcelona.
“They were a couple of levels above over the two games. We want to play these games again next year, so we have a massive week coming up. There is no point dwelling on what could have been, we have to focus on that week.”
Barcelona now meets either Liverpool or Porto in the semi-final.
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