It was ten years ago Alex Ferguson dubbed them the best team he had ever faced but those left from Barcelona’s iconic generation still have work to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three remain and when Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets and \nGerard Pique line up against Liverpool on Wednesday, they may wonder if \nthis could be their best chance of another, and perhaps final, Champions\n League triumph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pep Guardiola’s mesmeric side had just danced \naround and dizzied Manchester United in 2009, their 2-0 victory \ncompleting an historic treble, when Ferguson conceded: “Nobody has given\n us a hiding like that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But not long after the final whistle at \nWembley, Ferguson expressed doubts too, about the longevity of that \nBarca group and then, whether they could ever be replaced.”Great teams \ngo in cycles and the cycle they’re in at the moment is the best in \nEurope,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“How long it lasts and whether they can replace\n that team. they have the philosophy but it’s difficult to say if you \ncan find players like Xavi, Iniesta and Messi all the time. Probably \nnot.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Xavi and Iniesta have gone, succeeded by the \nall-encompassing Ivan Rakitic and, more recently, Arthur Melo, who could\n mature into the kind of player his predecessors would admire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Messi,\n who turns 32 in June, Busquets, who will be 31 in July, and Pique, \nalready 32, have hung on, driving the club through fresh cycles of \nsuccess.But in some ways perhaps, Ferguson was right. They could never \nsustain the Guardiola method in full, in part because pressing began to \nneutralise possession but mainly because that group of players was \nunique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Champions League, glory came again quickly in \n2011, United again the victims, but from 2012 to 2018, it followed only \nonce more, after beating Juventus in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Barcelona \noutplayed United in 2009, they had already won La Liga, the first of \neight league titles in 11 years, the last of those confirmed by victory \nover Levante on Saturday, when Messi scored the winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He knows \ndomestic dominance has been tarnished by underachievement in Europe and,\n regardless of whether they win another double this term, this team’s \nseason will be defined by them beating Liverpool, and then either \nTottenham or Ajax on June 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Messi, Busquets and Pique have \nplayed in 34 Champions League semi-finals matches between them and while\n the likelihood is there will be more to come, nothing is guaranteed. If\n the next takes as long to arrive as this one, Messi will be almost 36.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When\n Ernesto Valverde took charge at the start of last season, Barcelona \nwere wounded by consecutive Super Cup defeats to Real Madrid. Now they \nsit 18 points ahead of them in the league, having finished 17 clear of \nthem last season. But inferiority in Europe still rankles. It is \nMadrid’s name on the cup next to four of the last five years. And for \nthe remnants of one of Barcelona’s most symbolic eras, time is running \nout to put it right.There are green shoots emerging, a new cycle – \nArthur, Ousmane Dembele, Clement Lenglet and Carles Alena coming \nthrough.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was ten years ago Alex Ferguson dubbed them the best team he had ever faced but those left from Barcelona’s iconic generation still have work to do. Three remain and when Lionel Messi, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique line up against Liverpool on Wednesday, they may wonder if this could be their best chance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60297,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60296\/revisions\/60297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}