Today I'm going back just three years to 2018 and Tottenham's Champions League Group Stage game against Barcelona at Wembley. This was my first, and so far only, chance to see the great Lionel Messi play live and I was not to be disappointed by his performance. He was magnificent!
Messi was born in Argentina but moved to Spain as a 13 year old due to his prodigious football talent. As a child Messi was diagnosed as having a growth hormone deficiency and he underwent a course of injections in order to rectify that. Notwithstanding the treatment Messi attained the height of only 5 foot 7 inches but his comparative lack of inches has never impacted his footballing greatness. Many people regard Messi as the world's greatest footballer of the past dozen or so years but, whether you reside in the Ronaldo or Messi camp as regards who is the greatest, what is undeniable is that he is right up there amongst the very best of all time. Consider his accolades: FIFA Ballon D'Or (6 times), Argentina's Footballer of the Year (12 times), Champions League winner (4 times), La Liga winner (10 times), Copa del Rey winner (7 times) and there's much more than this. Messi recently transferred from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain and finished his time at Barca having made 778 appearances and scoring 672 goals. He is the all time top scorer in La Liga and holds both the appearances and goals scored records for Argentina (153 and 79 respectively). Truly World Class!
Barcelona had the lead that night at Wembley after just two minutes. 82,137 fans had crammed into Wembley essentially to see one man. A sublime through ball by that man Messi and Coutinho rifled the ball home. With 28 minutes gone, a collectors item: a goal that didn't involve Messi as Rakitic volleyed one in from the edge of the box. It was surely the most spectacular goal of the night. 0-2 at half time and straight after the resumption Messi dribbled through and rattled the post to serve warning that he wasn't done. But it was Tottenham that would score next as Harry Kane pulled the Barca defence around before pulling one back in the 52nd minute. Game on! Four minutes later and it was Messi time as he started and finished a Barcelona move to restore their two goal lead. 66 minutes gone and back came Tottenham again as Eric Lamela curled one into the net (incidentally it was the 8,000th goal scored in Champions League history) that took a fortunate deflection along the way. 2-3 and we knew that the next goal was crucial. We had to wait until the final minute for that goal and it was Messi himself that applied the coup de gras. The commentator described Messi's performance against Spurs that night as "majestic", virtuoso and a masterclass. He wasn't wrong!
Spurs had lost their opening two games in the Group Stage and would face an uphill struggle to qualify especially after only securing a draw against PSV Eindhoven in Holland in their third game. However they came good in the second half of the Group Stage picking up seven points out of nine to squeeze through in second place ahead of Inter Milan only on away goals scored in the head-to-head between the two clubs. Little did we know it at the time but Spurs were going to scrape through all the way to the Champions League Final in Madrid that season whereas group winners Barcelona would crash spectacularly to Liverpool at the Semi-final stage. Having beaten Liverpool 3-0 in the 1st Leg at Camp Nou, Barcelona managed to go down 4-0 at Anfield in the 2nd Leg. Liverpool would ultimately win the Final.
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