Lionel Messi weaves his magic as Barcelona sink Arsenal

The Gunners will have to overcome a 2-0 first leg defeat to Barcelona when they visit the Camp Nou next month if they are to progress to the Champions League quarter-finals.

However, 2 Lionel Messi goals in the second half cost Arsenal the match, and Arsene Wenger was fuming at the way those goals were conceded.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Olivier Giroud missed chances for the Gunners before Barca scored the opener.

“We are very happy as we got really nice score but we know that it is still not done”, the Uruguay worldwide said.

“Going out to a Barcelona team, you can’t judge them on that”, Ferdinand told BT Sport.

Arsenal were able to keep Barca at bay until the 71st minute when Messi opened the scoring, with the Argentina global doubling his side’s advantage from the penalty spot seven minutes from time. “I felt that we lost at the moment that we looked more capable of winning the game, and we also lost it in a way which we could not afford to give them”. We tried our best but we didn’t deserve it because we had enough chances to score at least one. “The regret I have is, despite looking like we dominated the game, we gave a goal away in the last 15 minutes, similar to Monaco; naive and that’s what is frustrating”. We will face the second-leg as we did with this first-leg. “We had an unbelievable chance in the first half”.

“I liked everything that we did tonight and we were the deserved winners”.

JUVENTUS 2, BAYERN 2 (at Turin, Italy) – Juventus came back from two goals down to draw against Bayern Munich in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 match. “If you play one of the favourites to win the Champions League and you have a chance, you need to find a goal”. There is a small chance, small margins obviously but we could see they were vulnerable at times.

“Barcelona are certainly through, 95 per cent, but we want to go there and play”, the Frenchman said. “The [Premier League] has been so inconsistent, especially from the top teams, this is the year Arsenal should go on and win it. If they don’t questions will surely be asked”.