My Barca scarf was still hanging this morning where I’d left it a few hours ago, by my bed. I had left it there because I wanted to wake up and realise I hadn’t dreamt that we’d beaten Manchester United and won the Champion’s League, lifting the European cup only for the second time in our history.

To think back on the evening the morning after the night before is to reflect on a performance that anyone who loves football should cherish for the rest of their lives. Of the many words said on the night noone sounded sweeter and more noble than those of Alex Ferguson. “The best team won,” he told the world simply.

 

This was a match where there were no complaints about the referee, and managers, players and fans showed mutual respect for each other. It was also a match that saw two popular royals-King Juan Carlos and Prince William- adopting scrupulous neutrality in public, and applauding both sides at the end.

 

FC Barcelona, the Spanish League champions and winners of the Copa del Rey this season, had chosen the old imperial city of Rome as the battleground in which to conquer Manchester United, the giant of the Premier League and reigning European champions, who claimed the status of the greatest club in the world.

 

Beyond an awkward first ten minutes-Barca comprehensively undressed and humiliated Man U, leaving the English club’s glory years and aspirations temporarily discarded on the turf of the Olympic stadium like so many broken dreams. This was Barca playing with the skill and style that turns football into poetry in motion-the updated ‘total football’ which Johan Cruyff brought to the club in the late 1980’s when the former Dutch international and Barca ‘star’ returned to his old Catalan club as manager.

 

There was nothing systematic about the Barca players in Rome as they swapped positions, and passed the ball from one to the other, one touch at a time, in a flowing and ever changing display of creativity. It reduced one Man U superstar, Wayne Rooney, to the bystand, and another Christiano Ronaldo, to the antics of an irate spoilt brat who does not get his way.

 

By contrast Lionel Messi weaved his way in an out of the obstacles played in front of him, and scored Barca’s defining second goal, the little man lifting himself to the skies to deliver a header into the top corner with effortless accuracy. No Hand of God here, just sheer determination and brilliance. Messi offered the goal up to God anyway.

 

My colleague Simon Kuper wrote in the Financial Times in April 2009 that Cruyff had taught Barca a style straight out of a Graham Greene novel: everything hinged on finding the ‘Third Man’. “Everyone has to be in motion so the man on the ball can always choose between two players to pass to.”

A month later in Rome two players in particular provided an object lesson in sophisticated movement on and off the ball. Xavi and Iniesta, combined and distributed balls, as if they had eyes at the back of their head, with Iniesta responsible for setting up Barca’s first goal by Etoo, ten minutes into a game Man United had seemed to be able to dominate.

 

After that, Man U could barely engage with Pep Guardiola’s side, let alone disrupt them. Barca’s ambition was personified by Captain Pujol-no lumbering defender on this epic night, but an inspired jack of all trades, moving from defence to wing to centre foreword, thwarting attacks, threatening goals, with a mobility designed to shatter the opponent’s system of defence and counter-attack.

 

 It forced Ferguson to bring on substitutes, and Rooney to swap flanks in the second half. Such pragmatism and regrouping had delivered results for Ferguson in the past, turning a game round in Man U’s favour, just when all seemed lost. But then he hadn’t reckoned on the effectiveness and elaboration of Barca’s shifting geometry, of players constantly linked with each other not just to play the game, but to win it, with honour -one for all and all for one. VISCA BARCA!