PLAYING FOR THE JOY, AND WINNING / THE NEW YORK TIMES ( VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

March 18, 2010

Playing for the Joy, and Winning

By ROB HUGHES

The Champions League is down to its last eight teams, and the quarter- and semifinal draws are set for Nyon, Switzerland on Friday.

As UEFA, the administrator, sees it, the most appealing factor is that clubs from six different national leagues are still in the competition — the first time there has been such a spread since 1990.

A more important aspect, surely, is that there are three teams among the last eight for whom performance is as important as either the result or the money. They are Barcelona, Manchester United and Arsenal.

The masterful way in which Barça, the reigning champion, outclassed Stuttgart on Wednesday made this transparent. Lionel Messi, of course, transcended the display. He scored two goals and set up one more, and once his teammates became intoxicated by his example, his fusion of sheer class with the sheer joy of performing, it became a night of spring carnival at the Nou Camp in Barcelona.

It was the manner of if, not the number of times Messi et al. put the ball into the net.

His movement, his quickness, his irrepressible joy in playing the game is a cause for celebration almost every time he takes the field. Here is a young man in love with his sport. Enjoy him.

Manchester United has such a performer, though in a different mode. Wayne Rooney, a bull of a player, but an extraordinary gifted one, inspires Manchester to forget that Cristiano Ronaldo ever left it.

Arsenal possesses, in Cesc Fàbregas, a playmaker rather than a finisher. But he, like Messi, and like Rooney, goes to the stadium on big nights with the express intention of giving a performance that thrills the audience.

These are precious individuals, because in modern sports it is easy to think that winning is everything and that winning pots of money is the motivation. It helps, greatly, that they play on fine teams and for managers who see soccer as something more than a results business. To be gifted like Messi requires a license to show it, and playmates to be on the same wavelength.

Barcelona on Wednesday, even without its injured playmaker Xavi Hernández, simply blew away Stuttgart. The final score, 4-0, barely reflected the supremacy.

Barça had control of the ball for 10 minutes more in the match than Stuttgart. Imagine it. Imagine being the opponents, chasing, defending, covering, tackling, trying to deny more gifted men. Imagine at every twist and turn, the opposition being swifter, first in their minds, then in moving the ball.

And imagine all this stemming from the 13th minute of play, the minute in which Messi started his run almost from the halfway line. His ball control is so tight, his feet so fast, his instinct so free that to tackle him risks fouling him.

So you are in Stuttgart white. One, two, three, four of you are drawn toward him. With Messi on the ball, you don’t dive in. He would elude your tackle, ridicule you, slip away like an eel.

Backing off doesn’t work either because, while you ponder, he darts. And he scores, for the 30th time this season. He then prompts the move from which Pedro, another from Barça’s academy, scores his 17th goal this season. Then Messi again, for the second time netting from the edge of the penalty box, and finally the teenager Bojan Krkic, a sub given just two minutes of action, makes it four.

The bookmakers know what they are seeing. They make Barcelona the clear favorite to retain the title this May. Their odds, quite possibly accurately, define the chances of all the rest: Manchester United, Inter Milan, Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Lyon, Bordeaux, CSKA Moscow in that order.

Those forecasts might change with the draw on Friday. The classic confrontation, a repeat of the final last year in which Barça beat United, is possible, provided they are drawn apart.

Such elitism might be considered too narrow, if it were not for our thirst to be entertained. The Champions League is intended to be the best against the best, and if the finalists are teams wedded to giving us a show, so much the better.

The reality is often something different. José Mourinho’s Inter is a more pragmatic machine, with one fine playmaker in Wesley Sneijder. Lyon and Bordeaux are opportunists, working hard to make this the first time since 2004 that two French clubs have reached the last eight.

The 2-1 victory by Bordeaux against Olympiakos on Wednesday was a feisty, fluctuating affair in which both teams had a man sent off — and the Greek team’s defender, Olof Mellberg, became the third to be red-carded, in the center circle after the final whistle had blown.

The match was lighted up by Yoann Gourcuff, bamboozling the goalie Antonis Nikopolidis with a goal from an acutely angled free kick. Gourcuff repeated the free kick later in the game, bouncing the ball off the bar, the post and then the chest of Nikopolidis.

But Oympiakos rallied, equalized with a ferocious volley from Kostas Mitroglou and could have scored again when it had the home side on the run in the second half.

Finally though, Marouane Chamakh, like Gourcuff an exciting prospect attracting bigger clubs, broke the tie with a supremely athletic header.

So now we await the draw in Nyon, a draw that will plot the road through to the final in Madrid on May 22.

While we wait, we know that Messi is beyond price and, he says, unlikely ever to leave Barcelona, where he is so much a part of the ethos of the way the team is taught to move the ball.

Gourcuff, who has already had one unsuccessful spell outside France, at A.C. Milan, is still drawing admirers. Zinédine Zidane, his idol, said on television Wednesday that Gourcuff was the talent that made his team play.

For that, for Barça and United and Arsenal, we give thanks. How dull it would be if players believed the mantra that only the result matters.