Barcelona 3 Chelsea 0 (4-1 agg): Lionel Messi’s double and Ousmane Dembele’s strike see Antonio Conte’s men crash out of Champions League
Blues were unable to find a way through to Barcelona's goal and were undone by a couple of Thibaut Courtois mistakes in Nou Camp defeat
WHITE shirts, white shorts, white socks, white flag.
Two minutes eight seconds into this second leg, Chelsea surrendered.
They are out, brushed aside by the brilliance, the elegance, the majesty of Lionel Messi.
The little master was at his jaw-dropping best.
Barcelona scored whenever the mood took them, with their sparkling skills twice combing through this Chelsea defence in the opening 20 minutes.
Messi got the first, set up the second for Ousmane Dembele, before scoring his 100th Champions League goal wearing the captain’s armband in the second half.
Nobody, certainly not Thibaut Courtois, could have stopped the Barca forward in this form.
Courtois froze, rooted to his spot, just like the rest of this Chelsea team when Messi was in possession.
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They were terrified of what he might do next.
To settle knockout football inside 20 minutes, to establish a two-goal cushion, plus the banker of an away goal, is quite something.
Chelsea were never going to recover.
Few, if it makes Chelsea feel any better about the way this game panned out, could.
Barcelona have refined this system over the years, inching their way towards perfection with this dizzying, one and two-touch brand.
Champions League football, the one trophy Chelsea prioritised more than any other until they finally lifted it in 2012, is not for Antonio Conte’s men any more.
They are decidedly B-list, licking their wounds with Manchester United, Tottenham, Besiktas, Basel, Porto and Paris Saint Germain.
The beasts of European football - Juventus, Barca, Madrid, Liverpool and Bayern Munich - will take control of the competition from here.
Chelsea, bystanders when Messi upped the tempo, are way off the pace.
They conceded, disastrously, with less than three minutes on the clock.
All that work on the training ground, all those team meetings, all those instructions in those final moments before Chelsea left the dressing rooms, went up in smoke.
It was Messi’s 99th in the Champions League, another pearler that pinged off his right boot after getting things going by playing a wall pass with Dembele.
Somewhere in between, Marcos Alonso failed to clear the danger and Messi pounced, nutmegging Courtois from the angle on the right after Luis Suarez touched him in.
There were some broken Blues out there, wishing away the rest of this second leg as Barcelona sliced through them whenever they felt like it.
Give Chelsea their due they showed some adventure, here for a game of football at least after the divas in the Chelsea dressing room won the day.
They persuaded Conte to start Olivier Giroud in the classic No9 position, giving Willian, especially, plus Victor Moses, Eden Hazard and Cesc Fabregas something to work off.
To their credit, they tried to make things happen.
What they found was a stubborn, obstinate Barcelona defence.
When Chelsea did threaten to make a breakthrough from the boot of Marcos Alonso’s first half free-kick, it hit the outside of Marc-Andre Ter Stegen’s upright.
At the start of the second half, with Alonso steaming into the penalty area, Dembele’s world class interception had shades of Beckenbauer about it. Seriously, the timing was that good.
By then Barcelona were 2-0 up, hurtling towards today’s quarter-final draw after Dembele, the big noise coming through at Camp Nou, scored.
Messi’s perseverance paid off, his determination to take control of the ball while Chelsea defenders ran around like the thing was on fire.
Messi somehow scooped it past three, wriggling like an eel before picking out the blindside run of Dembele scampering down the right.
He took one touch and with the next he smashed it into the top corner of Courtois’ goal.
The pass, to spot Dembele peeling away when everybody inside the stadium was expecting something else, seemed outrageous.
Messi, back in the Barcelona side following a weekend off after the birth of his third son, made it looked like child’s play. He was not finished.
When Andres Iniesta hooked the captain’s armband on to his left bicep, Barcelona’s forward reached another level.
It puffed him up, with Iniesta making his way to the Argentinian when he was substituted before the midway point in the second half.
Messi scored again, his third of these two ties against Chelsea, after 63 mesmerising minutes.
Unless you have anything to do with Chelsea over these two legs, you can never get enough of watching him at work.
Suarez got another assist, delaying his pass until Chelsea’s defence had backed off enough to create room for his buddy on the left.
Messi opened them up like a tin of beans, drilling his effort beyond Courtois with another razor sharp finish inside the area.
Those red and blue shirts all ran over to him, ruffling his hair after reminding the world just how good this fella really is.
Inevitably, he was too damn good for anyone wearing one of those white Chelsea shirts.