The 7-0 victory surpassed Barcelona’s biggest win in the Champions League to date, a 7-1 defeat of Bayer Leverkusen in 2012.
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Suarez, another of Luis Enrique’s key men, took over the late show with a sensational brace to his name – one through a volley and another with a stretched-out side-foot tap.
Messi scored after just three minutes when Neymar slid the ball through a spooked defence.
Celtic had the chance to level early on through a penalty, but Moussa Dembele couldn’t convert.
It did not get any easier for Celtic as Barcelona introduced Andres Iniesta at the interval and the home side had their third of the match in the 50th minute of action when Neymar curled a brilliant free kick into the top corner from 30 yards.
One minute later, Messi slid home a pass from Luis Suarez to complete his hat-trick and put Barcelona 5-0 head before Suarez scored twice in the 75th and 88th minutes to finish off the visitors.
Celtic coach Brendan Rodgers was also in awe of Messi and the other parts of the ruthless “MSN” attacking trident of Messi, Suarez and Neymar.
“There can be no embarrassment because they do that to better teams than ourselves, [but] it’s obviously a disappointment”, Rodgers said.
In their two full seasons together at the Nou Camp, Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez have scored a combined 253 goals and have assisted 120 more.
It was the deadly trio who once again took centre stage on Tuesday night, playing a hand in all of the seven goals, as they ruthlessly exposed Celtic in the Champions League.
He said: “I think credit to the goalkeeper”.
“Professionally it is never nice when this happens”, said the manager.
As Celtic continued to chase shadows Luis Suarez grabbed a double to give Celtic their heaviest European defeat.
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“We’re going to try and learn a lot in this Champions League campaign”, he said. “It is a front three that can occupy as many players as you want”. “I’m very pleased. We’re able to compete for the title, but our first goal is to win the group”. “They couldn’t have come to a more hard place in world football after the highly intense game [against Rangers] at the weekend and to have hardly any preparation time against the world’s best at keeping the ball; they beat you up with the football at times”. The ball moves as if it is on an ice rink and they move as fast as that, they are high-level, top players with big belief and that is why they are what they are. “All we can hope is that they keep scoring like that”, added the Spaniard.
