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Barcelona 3 Manchester United 1, 2011 – Simon Kuper
On this week’s episode of Greatest Games, Simon Kuper joins Jonathan and Marcus to look back on the 2011 Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United.
Over the decade preceding this final, Barcelona’s fabled academy La Masia was quietly assembling the greatest generation of footballing talent to be produced at one time by a single club. It was in this final when that crop of talent – which included Xavi, Lionel Messi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and Gerard Pique along with the addition of extraordinary imports Dani Alves, Eric Abidal and David Villa – best applied their abilities to Barcelona’s Cruyffian tactics and decimated the Premier League champions on European football’s grandest stage.
Recorded on Tuesday 3 August, just ahead of the news regarding Lionel Messi’s departure from Barcelona.
Order our upcoming quarterly – including how escaping Roland Duchâtelet took Charlton to the edge of extinction, how recent handball controversies have made football ask what it believes law to be and a selection of players who have abandoned one club to join their biggest rivals – Issue 41.
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