so the magician worked his magic, Fabregas was fab and Villa weaved a winner round the helpless Milan defense.
Right?
Not quite.
Indeed, that's pretty much how it worked for 5,350 seconds of Barcelona brilliance Tuesday night at Camp Nou. Problem was, Barcelona needed 5,400.
And let the cliches begin.
In football, you must play the full 90 minutes.
In football, you must never underestimate your opponent.
In football, winning requires complete concentration.
And in football, champions know how to kill a match.
True enough, but let the record show this: In football, there's still no team better than Barcelona, Tuesday night's results be damned. Whether it was 2-0, 2-2 or 8-2, Barcelona's game against AC Milan on Tuesday night wasn't necessarily about the result.
No, Tuesday night for Barcelona was about getting it over with. It was about getting through the first of two tough group-stage matches, both against a fellow European blue-blood in AC Milan. It was about playing well enough to not get beat and it was about moving back to face the oncoming threat of Real Madrid in La Liga—all without any real harm done.
On those counts, Tuesday proved mostly successful.
Barcelona played well enough to win and probably would have if not for two moments of inexcusable lapses. Lionel Messi shined, like he always does, and Cesc Fabregas made a successful Champions League debut in a Barcelona shirt after coming on for the mysteriously injured Andres Iniesta.
But that's where the problems started. With Iniesta's injury, Barca suddenly possessed a midfield with concerns over depth. Alexis Sanchez was missing through long-term injury, and then Iniesta had to leave the game prematurely.
Later, a dinged-up Carles Puyol came in to steady the back line in anticipation of AC Milan's last gasp. But when gasp came at last, as everyone must have known it would, another defender, Milan's Thiago Silva, towered above the rest to punish Barcelona's second lapse, seconds before the final whistle.
It served as the final bit of cruelty for Barcelona, which allowed itself only one other lapse—in the game's opening 30 seconds. Normally such a lapse would go unpunished, but before those 30 seconds ticked off the clock, Gato had already hopped and skipped through Barcelona's midfield, streaked past a momentarily sluggish defense and shot past a stunned Victor Valdes.
Messi's magic and Villa's brilliance steered the game back to Barcelona, but for all the seeming certainty of its dominance, two mistakes cost two precious points.
No matter, though. Barcelona will qualify for the knockout stage and so will Milan. Neither club will struggle at all to eliminate BATE Borisov or Viktoria Plzen, even if both sets of fans struggle to follow their heroes deep into the heart of the continent.
That's because the result wasn't important, but the act of getting through it was. And despite the frustration Messi and his mates must feel tonight, everything will be forgotten months—even weeks—from now.
With that in mind, here are five things we learned from Barca's performance in a 2-2 draw with AC Milan on Tuesday night.
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