Barcelona’s Benchmark Shows How Far Man United Still Have To Go

Manchester United fans will feel, despite a largely bland, forgettable first season under Louis van Gaal, that their club is back where it belongs; the Champions League.

It is that competition, of course, that carries the most mystique in the football world. Players want to play in it, managers want to manage in it and club executives want to see the money that rolls in from it.
Fans, too, savour those magical European nights under the floodlights, and United’s are no different. They have missed it terribly during the club’s year out. Having grown so used to taking part over the last two decades, there was an emptiness, a void, without it in their lives.
Being on the outside looking in is never pleasant, though it does have one benefit; you can enjoy the spectacle without suffering the tension and agony that comes with watching your own team. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Take this year’s final between Juventus and Barcelona. It was a wonderful, engrossing match. Juventus fought valiantly for periods but Barcelona, in particular, put on a show of thrusting, theatrical brilliance. They play a brand of intricate, other-worldly football that makes the heart soar.
Yet United fans viewing this performance would, at times, have felt their hearts sinking, as the chasm that has opened up between themselves and Europe’s truly elite crop of clubs was laid bare.