If last season’s 8-2 humbling at the hands of Bayern Munich was a knife to the heart of the Barcelona-Lionel Messi era of dominance then Tuesday night’s 4-1 reverse at the Camp Nou to PSG was its death rattle.
Barca have come back from the same scoreline in a two-legged European tie against PSG before – the Remontada in 2017.
But after the desperately disjointed performance they turned in in the second half you’d be brave to bet on them repeating the feat at the Parc de Prince on March 10.
And Messi, who so desperately wanted to depart the Camp Nou in the summer of 2020, wouldn’t have seen much to make him want to stay past summer 2021.
But in among the depressing sight of his Barcelona team-mates being overwhelmed by their Parisian counterparts, the Argentina captain did catch a glimpse of something that will give him hope for a brighter future – if not in Catalunya, then at least with his national team.
As PSG took the game by the scruff in the second half, it was an Argentinian who stole the show, pinging passes and providing the sort of deep-lying midfield control that the French champions have so severely lacked in recent years.
While Kylian Mbappe might have got the headlines for his searing speed and sublime finishing, it was Messi’s international team-mate Leandro Paredes who set the tempo, as influential a presence on the Camp Nou pitch as Sergio Busquets was when at a peak that long since looks to have passed.
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