RANGERS fans should keep the celebration lager on ice for a while yet. The message from one of Europe's rather more prestigious football clubs is that beating Celtic 1-0 can do immeasurable damage to your season.
Thirty-eight minutes into their Champions League second leg game at the Nou Camp on 4 March, Barcelona's Lionel Messi pulled up with a leg injury that has kept him out of the side ever since. Without him, Barcelona's league challenge has
hit the rocks.
While Real Madrid have faltered at the top of the Primera Liga, Frank Rijkaard's team have failed to take advantage. On Saturday they established a 2-0 lead in Seville against Real Betis, only to concede three goals in 13 minutes in the second half against a spirited Betis team. Humiliatingly, they have now surrendered second place and the job of denying another Madrid title to Villarreal, from a small town in the lavatory manufacturing heartlands north of Valencia. Rijkaard's title hopes have been flushed away, along with any prospect of him remaining at Barcelona next season.
His last chance of leaving a farewell gift to the demanding cules of the Nou Camp is in the Champions League. The habitually chauvinistic English press has taken a cursory look at the sides remaining in the last eight and identified Barcelona as the only bunch of foreign johnnies capable of preventing the big cup coming back to England this season. In some quarters it is Barcelona against the Premier League, and the Catalans' chances are severely diminished without Messi.
If they can make it to the final, you suspect that Barcelona could provide their boss with a fitting finale. Standing in the way are the useful German outfit Schalke 04 and probably Manchester United in the semi-final. On the same Saturday evening that Barcelona were surrendering tamely in Andalucia, United were playing the sort of exhilarating football that Barcelona specialised in three years ago.
Part of Barcelona's problem is having a dead man walking as the coach. Many of the team are playing with an eye on future upheavals rather than the immediate challenges and possibilities of this season. A new coach will find a side in urgent need of an overhaul, with the listless Ronaldinho, and a Thierry Henry who is homesick for England, being the highest profile players leading the exodus.
If Ronaldinho remains an inspirational player struggling for fitness and motivation, Henry is an ephemeral ghost of the player he was at Arsenal. Henry spoke frankly, too frankly, about the extent to which problems in his private life have affected his morale and performances at Barcelona. The Catalan press and fans were short on sympathy, pointing out that the 17-year-old Bojan Krkic is a far more effective option up front at present than the depressed Frenchman. They look north at an Arsenal team inspired by the brilliant Catalan Arsene Wenger stole from them four-and-a- half years ago, Cesc Fabregas, and it makes them even more embittered about the empty vessel Henry that Wenger sold to them.
Like Liverpool, Barcelona are a side that maintains a core of home-grown talent. This season, though, too much of the basic work has fallen on Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta, while the squabbling or sulking superstars have under-performed.
The one conspicuous exception to that pattern was the consistently excellent Messi. The Champions League joint top-scorer with Cristiano Ronaldo on six goals this season, Messi was the player Rijkaard could always turn to in adversity. If the temptation with football is to look for deep-rooted malaises, systemic vulnerability or a pattern, sometimes it can be simpler than that. For all the present woes afflicting Barcelona, the likelihood is that, if the Argentine genius hadn't played against Celtic four weeks ago, or hadn't sustained that injury, Barcelona would be top of the Spanish League and favourites for the Champions League.
One man shouldn't make a team, but just think about what would happen to Manchester United without Ronaldo, Liverpool without Gerrard, Chelsea without Drogba. Messi should be fit again by the time of the final in Moscow, or even the second leg of a possible semi-final. By then it may be too late for Barcelona.
The full article contains 724 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
