As much as last night’s result in Paris could be interpreted as a changing of the guard, the five-time European champions Barcelona being entirely dominated by the upstart Paris Saint-Germain, a club whose best performance in the Champions League was a semifinal appearance in 1995, it says a lot about the inarguable staying power of Barca that many are already talking about the approach PSG should take at the Camp Nou.
Barcelona and Atletico Madrid drew 1-1 at the Camp Nou in the Copa del Rey semifinal second leg, and Barca advanced to the final, 3-2 on aggregate. That description does absolutely no service to what's just transpired in Catalonia.
This match included three red cards, a wrongfully disallowed goal, a ridiculous free kick from Messi that thundered off the crossbar, a contentious penalty, a missed penalty and all the other drama you’ve come to expect from a match between these two clubs.
Barcelona, the defending Copa del Rey champions, are on the cusp of being able to defend their title after defeating Atletico Madrid 2-1 in Madrid. Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi put Barca up 2-0 by halftime, but Antoine Griezmann managed to pull one back for Atletico in the 59th minute.
Over 48,000 inside the Vicente Calderon witnessed a nightmare start as Suarez opened the scoring for Barcelona in the seventh minute. With Javier Mascherano returned to the defensive midfield role, his crunching tackle saw the ball roll free to Suarez.
Barcelona’s 1-0 victory over Real Sociedad in the first leg of their Copa del Rey quarterfinal became a mere footnote as the Blaugrana thrashed their opposition in the return leg, 5-2.
Lionel Messi registered a goal and two assists, Luis Suarez added a goal and a fantastic assist of his own, while Denis Suarez benefited from the vision of his teammates to score two. Arda Turan was also on the scoresheet for Barcelona.
Last week, British magazine Coach published what they contended was an exclusive interview with Lionel Messi, in which the Barcelona star supposedly said he would like to stay at Barcelona.
It turns out they published nothing of the sort.
The "interview" has been taken down and replaced with this message:
Barcelona closed the gap on Real Madrid to two points, although Real still have a game in hand, following their 4-0 victory over Eibar on Sunday. Denis Suarez opened the scoring before goals from the attacking trio of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar finished the contest.