It was a “harrowing night” for Chelsea’s players and a “sobering” one for Rodgers, whose efforts to keep Barca at bay with five at the back failed badly, says Michael Grant of The Times. “It was a great way to make our entrance to the competition (this season)”.
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Lionel Messi scored his sixth Champions League hat-trick as rampant Barcelona inflicted on Celtic their heaviest ever European defeat.
Messi’s the best player in the world, at whatever position he plays.
“He’s total football and we’d be very stupid if we imposed limits on him”, he added.
While Rodgers has enjoyed an encouraging start domestically, winning Manager of the Month for August in the Scottish Premiership before defeating Rangers 5-1 in the first Old Firm tussle of the season at the weekend, he has already endured some hard assignments in continental competition.
Instead, Barcelona improved on the 6-1 win over Celtic from their last meeting in 2013.
“Professionally it is never nice when that happens”, Rodgers said, “[but] these are top class players and they have done that to much better teams than us”. Whenever you lose as a professional it is tough to take but [my] players have been brilliant. Meanwhile, it was the first time in this season when the trio of Lionell Messi, Jr.
Barca immediately upped a gear and doubled their advantage three minutes later when a sensational exchange of passes between Neymar and Messi freed the latter to tap home his second of the night despite the presence of seven Celtic defenders in the area. We are not playing for ourselves, nobody is looking for personal glory. De Vries should have done better.
It got even better from there.
Not only was the Barcelona forward an excellent goalscorer for Rodgers but also the Celtic boss thinks he is “a handsome man” in terms of his humility and commitment to his job and family.
“The ball moves like it’s on an ice rink, it’s a fantastic pitch”.
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. We didn’t do well enough on the ball.
“The summer break, the Olympics and then Neymar’s holidays got in the way”.
Thomas Mueller drilled home the second on the stroke of half-time off David Alaba’s low cross from the left.
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Having taken just three points from a pool containing Barca, AC Milan and Ajax in 2013, they were hoping for a good start to build on their weekend derby win over Rangers.
