So, the Celtic-Barcelona game was a little disappointing result-wise, but Barcelona are a wonderful bunch of players to watch. Seriously, they were awesome, and sadly for Celtic they took the game very seriously and all ten of their working players worked themselves into the ground. Initially at least though Barcelona had a lot of play, they weren't really doing anything. They went 1-0 down, got a quick goal back, and then went down again. Their heads went down, Celtic nearly made it 3-1 and you had the feeling Celtic might get a comfortable 3 or 4-1 home victory to give them a chance in the second leg (seriously, Barcelona looked so vulnerable at the back). But Caldwell made a mistake outside the box, Henry scored a wonderful goal to make it 2-2 and it was like Barcelona had a new fire of life.
They were amazing. Seriously, the same Barcelona defender passed three consecutive 60-yard balls through loads of Celtic players right onto the chest of Messi in a ten minute spell. Ronaldinho was subbed bringing Barcelona up to 11 players, and they were all over Celtic. It was so frustrating cause you could see from above that Barcelona were only playing with two defenders and weren't gonna cover their full-backs in defensive positions when those guys got back. You knew if Celtic got the ball and kept it they'd get in there, but they could hardly get and keep the ball. Barcelona had something like 700 completed passes in the game compared with like 150-200 for Celtic.
Celtic have no chance now of going through, and Celtic's long run of undefeated home matches in Europe has come to an end.
Still, they've only lost 2 of their last 32 home matches in Europe, both to Barcelona (1-3, 2-3). And did you know, this season Barcelona had conceded no headed goals until Wednesday, when they conceded two to Celtic? So there's some goodness to take away.
And just to say, Liverpool are really, really lucky. Two late goals saved them from failing to secure an advantage against a team they played for 60 mins with ten-men. It's a shame the referee ruined that game with his stupid decision, as I kinda fancied Inter this year to go all the way. Hard luck!