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Alan Hansen: Barcelona are the greatest - but my Liverpool would have tested them more
I played in a Liverpool team which dominated Europe and have witnessed the likes of Ajax, Bayern Munich and AC Milan enjoy similar periods of success, but the current Barcelona team are simply the greatest club side I have seen.
I say that without hesitation. For all of the dominance we enjoyed at Liverpool or the sustained excellence of Milan, neither of those teams encapsulated the style and sensational football that Barcelona are now producing to such a devastating effect.
Their football is so easy on the eye and, after the football cynics having had a field day for so long, Barcelona are such a good advert for the game because they are producing football that has taken the sport to another level.
Even if you are not interested in football, it would be impossible to watch Barcelona’s performance against Manchester United at Wembley and not marvel at just how good they are.
If you had to produce three robots to deliver 10 out of 10 performances in a football match, they could not perform any better than Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta did against United.
You simply cannot defend against the three of them when they are in such form. Their quick feet, technique and artistry is phenomenal and it renders their passing and movement impossible to deal with.
Very little surprises me in football. Wayne Rooney’s overhead kick for United against Manchester City earlier this was a special moment, but we have seen overhead kicks before.
There were moments in the game at Wembley on Saturday, however, when I saw things that I have never seen before. Barcelona’s inter-passing, Messi’s movement and ability to find space and the attacking brilliance of their forward players left me wondering how on Earth you could stop it.
Inter Milan showed last season, when they eliminated Barcelona in the Champions League semi-finals, that they can be stopped, but to do that, you have to be negative and not allow Barcelona to play. You have to make sure that you play really well and that they don’t, but Barcelona are so good that it is always going to be extremely difficult to beat them. The Liverpool team that I played in during the late 1970s and early 1980s won four European Cups in eight seasons and I’m certain that we would have given Barcelona a better game than United did at Wembley.
Barcelona decimated an average United team who had no answer to their opponents ability. Our Liverpool team were a much stronger team than the present United outfit, but we would still have had to find a way of nullifying Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. You can’t really blame United’s players for the manner of their defeat. Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic are two of the best defenders the Premier League has seen, they are clearly no duds, but Barcelona cut through them like a hot knife through butter.
And in Messi, they have a player who is on a different planet to anybody else. At one point, he dropped his shoulder and sent three United defenders and half the crowd behind the goal the wrong way. He was absolutely amazing at Wembley. The hallmark of any player is the ease of which he finds time and space, but Messi somehow finds that space in an area as congested at that between the six and 18 yard box. He almost dances with the ball and I have never seen a player with such quick feet and the ability to finish that Messi possesses.
The debate now will be whether he is the best player the world has seen and, at just 23, that is something that can only be answered once he has replicated his club success on the international stage. But there can surely be no debate over Barcelona’s standing as the best club side of all-time.
I still think that the best team in the history of the game is Brazil’s World Cup-winning side of 1970, because they had something like nine sensational players in the same side.
But this Barcelona side do remind me of the Brazilians I faced in 1982, the best team never to win the World Cup, because on top of Messi, Xavi and Iniesta they also have a great goalscorer in David Villa.
The challenge facing Pep Guardiola and his players now is to dominate the Champions League by winning it again and again for a period of years, like the great dynasties of Real Madrid, Ajax, Bayern, Liverpool and Milan. It is extremely difficult for any team to do that, but Barcelona are so good that they really could go on to win the European Cup four or five times on the trot.
I played in a Liverpool team which dominated Europe and have witnessed the likes of Ajax, Bayern Munich and AC Milan enjoy similar periods of success, but the current Barcelona team are simply the greatest club side I have seen.
I say that without hesitation. For all of the dominance we enjoyed at Liverpool or the sustained excellence of Milan, neither of those teams encapsulated the style and sensational football that Barcelona are now producing to such a devastating effect.
Their football is so easy on the eye and, after the football cynics having had a field day for so long, Barcelona are such a good advert for the game because they are producing football that has taken the sport to another level.
Even if you are not interested in football, it would be impossible to watch Barcelona’s performance against Manchester United at Wembley and not marvel at just how good they are.
If you had to produce three robots to deliver 10 out of 10 performances in a football match, they could not perform any better than Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta did against United.
You simply cannot defend against the three of them when they are in such form. Their quick feet, technique and artistry is phenomenal and it renders their passing and movement impossible to deal with.
Very little surprises me in football. Wayne Rooney’s overhead kick for United against Manchester City earlier this was a special moment, but we have seen overhead kicks before.
There were moments in the game at Wembley on Saturday, however, when I saw things that I have never seen before. Barcelona’s inter-passing, Messi’s movement and ability to find space and the attacking brilliance of their forward players left me wondering how on Earth you could stop it.
Inter Milan showed last season, when they eliminated Barcelona in the Champions League semi-finals, that they can be stopped, but to do that, you have to be negative and not allow Barcelona to play. You have to make sure that you play really well and that they don’t, but Barcelona are so good that it is always going to be extremely difficult to beat them. The Liverpool team that I played in during the late 1970s and early 1980s won four European Cups in eight seasons and I’m certain that we would have given Barcelona a better game than United did at Wembley.
Barcelona decimated an average United team who had no answer to their opponents ability. Our Liverpool team were a much stronger team than the present United outfit, but we would still have had to find a way of nullifying Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. You can’t really blame United’s players for the manner of their defeat. Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic are two of the best defenders the Premier League has seen, they are clearly no duds, but Barcelona cut through them like a hot knife through butter.
And in Messi, they have a player who is on a different planet to anybody else. At one point, he dropped his shoulder and sent three United defenders and half the crowd behind the goal the wrong way. He was absolutely amazing at Wembley. The hallmark of any player is the ease of which he finds time and space, but Messi somehow finds that space in an area as congested at that between the six and 18 yard box. He almost dances with the ball and I have never seen a player with such quick feet and the ability to finish that Messi possesses.
The debate now will be whether he is the best player the world has seen and, at just 23, that is something that can only be answered once he has replicated his club success on the international stage. But there can surely be no debate over Barcelona’s standing as the best club side of all-time.
I still think that the best team in the history of the game is Brazil’s World Cup-winning side of 1970, because they had something like nine sensational players in the same side.
But this Barcelona side do remind me of the Brazilians I faced in 1982, the best team never to win the World Cup, because on top of Messi, Xavi and Iniesta they also have a great goalscorer in David Villa.
The challenge facing Pep Guardiola and his players now is to dominate the Champions League by winning it again and again for a period of years, like the great dynasties of Real Madrid, Ajax, Bayern, Liverpool and Milan. It is extremely difficult for any team to do that, but Barcelona are so good that they really could go on to win the European Cup four or five times on the trot.
Interview: Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez
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