Barcelona Beat Manchester to Win the European Football Champions Cup

Barcelona won its fourth European Football Champions Cup last night at mythic Wembley Stadium in London, beating Manchester United 3-1.

I’m a steadfast Manchester fan and it hurt to see the great team that they are beaten so easily, almost effortlessly, by Barcelona. But, it was a Spanish victory of extraordinary proportions. After the first 10 minutes, during which MU tried to control the game by hustling Barcelona in its own end, the Barcelona team found its legendary rhythm and the rest was, as they say, history.

Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester manager for 25 years and a football legend in his own right, was philosophic about the defeat, saying that Barcelona is the best team he has ever faced and surely the best in Europe right now. He also noted that his team was never able to control Lionel Messi, the two-time Golden Globe winner who seems to score by dancing across the field when he’s not flying. He is almost universally considered to be the greatest footballer who has ever played the game.

Ferguson is 70 and says he’ll be back next year, wiser and ready to improve his team. He has won more English football championships than any other coach, and has three European Football Champions Cups with Manchester.

The Barcelona coach, Pep Guardiola, is 40. He was on the 1992 Barcelona team that won the first European Football Champions Cup for Barcelona - at Wembley. He is a product of the famous Barcelona “school” that finds and trains young footballers to become part of the Barcelona family. That is, indeed, one of Barcelona’s great strengths - their feeling for each other and their completely unselfish playing that means that no one hoards the ball when passing it would be a better idea.

The finest example of this occurred last night. Barcelona captain Carles Puyol, injured and entering the match very late as a gesture for his importance to the team, should have been the player to hold high the cup, but instead he put the captain’s armband around the arm of Frenchman Eric Abidal, the Barcelona player stricken with kidney cancer earlier this season who has survived surgery and played in the last several matches. So it was Abidal who lifted the cup for the first tumultuous shout at Wembley.

That’s team spirit. That’s what makes Barcelona so special. That’s why they win so easily. They think together, they laugh together and they play almost as if they had the same brain.

Congratulations.

And to Manchester United, don’t give up. We love you, and as baseball immortal Casey Stengel once said, “You gotta lose ‘em some of the time. When you do, lose ‘em right.” You did just that last night at Wembley.