Second Best By A Huge Margin

Barcelona 2 - Manchester United 0
Scorers
Barcelona: E'to (10), Messi (70)

Team: Van der Sar, Rio, Vidic, Evra, O'Shea, Carrick, Anderson (Tevez 46), Giggs (Scholes 75), Park (Berbatov 66), Rooney, Ronaldo

We lost to a better team, that's the long and short of it.

For a good 10 minutes, Ronaldo threatened to run riot in the Barcelona defense, then a total collapse at the back allowed E'to in to score the opener against the run of play. From then on, it was one-way tragic. Our players simply lost it and were never really in the game. All the poor games we've played the entire season came back to haunt us. This was not Bolton or Boro, but the mighty Barcelona.

Too many players went missing at the same time, but to be really honest, nothing would have changed even if they came back. Barcelona are simply the best team in the world, if not the universe.

The only thing that could have evened the balance out was to have Fletcher back, even then it would be a stretch to match the effectiveness of a very fluid Barcelona attack. By some fluke we survived their onslaught last season in the semis. But this season is different. Their midfield was powered by two pocket dynamos in Ineista and Xavi, not to mention the mother of all pocket dynamos in little Messi in attack. We just didn't have an answer to combat such an awesome force on display.

Anderson, Carrick and Giggs were simply not in the game. In fact it would have been better playing with 8 men. Addition by subtraction might well have worked out better for us.

Rooney probably had his worst game in a United shirt. I could have sworn he was wearing a Barcelona jersey under the white of United. Even single pass he made went to a claret and blue.

The least said about Evra the better. He went missing for the first goal, and went missing again for the second goal. He probably also went missing in the 5th, 6th and 7th goals that Barcelona should have scored but didn't.

We were bamboozled. The gulf between what the best in the world had to offer and what we presented was huge. And it's not something that can be rectified in the transfer market either. There is an air that oozles in the way Barcelona plays their brand of football, and it's called class. Something that we failed to show when Scholes, Rooney, Ronaldo and Vidic tackled recklessly as the game drew to an end. They need to learn to accept defeat to a better team. They need to learn how to retain their dignity in the face of defeat.

It's back to the drawing board for Ferguson and his team of coaches. And congratulations to Barcelona for winning their own version of the treble and showing us how the beautiful game should be played.

Edit: 4 hrs after the game and I still can't get any sleep, so this is a call out to all the @#$% who I caught the game with:

I'm going to put my foot down on this matter, or down your throats. If we ever.....EVER make it to the finals again, we watch it at MY kopitiam. Period. No more accommodating to you pussies. I don't care if any of you drop dead at your meetings in the morning.