This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer’s.
A sprawling, dizzying and entertaining giant meeting over two intense rounds.
It was quite fitting then that the most flamboyant, giddy and perhaps most entertaining player of them all got the last word.
The first meeting, last week, at the Camp Nou was an event where rhyme, reason and order were thrown out the window in favor of pure football entertainment.
So more peace and quiet in the return at Old Trafford?
Well, all in all, this also felt as spread out as Fred’s kalufs. Because neither United nor Barcelona exuded direct pragmatism and control this time either.
The French judicial skipper Clement Turpin, extremely experienced in the context, seemed to be drawn into the whole thing in any case. Which was perhaps not as positive.
Without calling the penalty after just over a quarter of an hour directly wrong (on the other hand, extremely cheap), regardless, it wasn’t really possible to get a handle on where Turpin’s limit for things actually was.
So when Bruno Fernandes, more or less knowingly, welcomed Frenkie de Jong to Old Trafford with a ball in his stomach, it was not surprising that emotions ran high for both teams. Regardless of ball in the stomach or not, it felt rather expected considering that the 40-year-old lawyer with the whistle had already lost control long ago.
Way worse. And that applies to everything from Turpin and the match picture to the opening of this column.
But it would be doing the hero of the match a disservice not to choose a trickier route to the spirit.
Even kept Rashford scoreless
We will get there – but there is also something else to celebrate.
Because this wasn’t all giddy and entertaining. This was quality football from all angles.
Barcelona must have found it quite difficult to create much more than that 0-1 penalty from Robert Lewandowski, against a United defense that acted almost flawlessly. But no one can say that Franck Kessie didn’t take the chance in Pedri and Gavi’s absence, at least in the first half.
Barcelona may have leaked dangerously defensively at home at Camp Nou – but with Andreas Christensen in the team, they are undeniably a much more stable team. So stable that even Marcus Rashford (he who always scores these days) walked away from a football match at Old Trafford without a draw.
But if Marcus Rashford’s goal production was a and o for Manchester United’s fine form after the turn of the year, there was another protagonist and decisive factor in this match.
The main role he dreamed of
He was derisively called a billion-dollar “fidget spinner” when, after much back and forth, he was signed for a record sum from Ajax last summer.
And so far, the dribble-happy Antony hadn’t really made much of a case for being called anything else, overall.
In this structureless chaos, however, he thrived.
Because it was when Antony came on at the break that things started to happen for Manchester United. That’s when they started to take over. It was then, just a few minutes after the start of the second half, that Fred equalized against a Barcelona side that looked nothing like they did before the break.
And it was with a quarter of an hour left that the ball ended up with a 22-year-old (or 23-year-old if you’re reading this on Friday) Brazilian winger with shooting position and billion-dollar pressure on his shoulders.
He has been mocked. He has been questioned. He has very rarely made the simple decision on a football pitch.
Here, however, he made the obvious, straightforward and match-winning decision.
A distinct 2-1 finish later, Antony had, finally, got the leading role he dreamed of in the theater of dreams. The one he was recruited to have.
One of Football Europe’s strongest teams
So what will be the bottom line of all this?
That Manchester United and Barcelona, given where they are here and now, shouldn’t really have to settle on more than two Thursdays in February, I already knew last week. And no reason was given to revise that statement here.
Regardless, Xavi and Barcelona must continue to think about why it is not wanted as soon as it is about European games instead of league games (although it was admittedly close to the end that they got an extension). Manchester United must continue to be considered one of Football Europe’s most in-form teams and continue to add more confidence each week. This scalp? It gave perhaps the biggest boost so far since Erik ten Hag took over the coaching helm last summer.
Not just for a billion-dollar “fidget spinner”.
