Barcelona vs Chelsea: Charismatic Messi banishes the Blues away

It was just another day for the Barcelona faithful as they saw their team register a thumping victory over Chelsea and booking their seat in the next round of UEFA Champions League in style.

This was made possible by the astonishing Lionel Messi who scored in each half of the game to beat Chelsea. With an aggregate victory of 4-1 over both the legs, Barcelona joined Liverpool, Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester City, Sevilla, AS Roma and Bayern Munich in the last eight of this season's Champions League.

Much was anticipated before the start of the match where two footballing heavyweights were about to battle for a place in the last eight of Champions League with Chelsea hoping to be the third premier league side to qualify for the next round.

But it all proved too much for them as apart from battling an away goal nightmare scored by Messi at Stamford Bridge they also had to beat the mighty Barcelona at the Nou Camp. With such a herculean task at hand, they were ripped in the initial minutes of the match by none other than Lionel Messi.

The Argentinian opened the scoring in the third minute of the match with a sublime finish at the near post to beat Thibaut Courtois and this goal also meant that he scored the quickest goal in his career and with this strike he also marked the milestone of reaching 100 Champions League goals with Barcelona. Apart from his swiftness in the initial stages of the game he also helped set up Ousmane Dembele's debut goal for Barcelona.

Chelsea were bamboozled both tactically and physically by Barcelona. Right from the start of the game, Barcelona dominated the proceedings and the early goal set up a stage for Barcelona to script another historic victory over Chelsea.

Chelsea did not seem to put their entire gamut of defence, midfield, and attack into a fruitful proposition. Antonio Conte and Chelsea put up a good team on paper but the team failed to deliver as Messi with one of his trademark dribbles at the edge of the Chelsea box scored a right footed goal right in between the legs of Courtois.

Valverde chose to go with a 4-4-2 formation by playing Messi and Suarez up front and handed a start to Dembele who utilised this opportunity very well. The Frenchman scored a thunderous right-footed goal thereby silencing all of his critics and banishing all his post-injury performance concerns.

Chelsea, on the other hand, saw some decent chances being created by Hazard and Alonso. Messi once again nutmegged Courtois and scored his second goal of the game.

Now Messi has scored 100 Champions League Goals in 123 matches and when it comes to comparison with his all-time rival Cristiano Ronaldo he took 14 fewer games than him to achieve this milestone.

Messi has now scored 20 goals in his last 18 outings against English clubs. With Messi at his disposal, Ernesto Valverde has gone from a damage control scenario at the start of the season to en-route for a treble in his first season in charge at Barcelona.