Valentines in Barcelona!

Barcelona 6-1 Celta Vigo 

La Liga
Sunday 14th February 2016

Do you remember that game where Lionel Messi won a penalty and passed the ball to Luis Suarez to score? Well, this was it...

In a lifetime of visiting new places and watching obscure football matches, you know that for every time you witness a drab draw in the freezing cold in some far-flung corner of the country, there will be also be one game that creates dozens of memories and makes the whole football experience seem worthwhile.

Needless to say after frequent visits to places such as Newport, Morecambe and Dagenham & Redbridge in recent seasons, this trip to the Nou Camp to see Barcelona versus Celta Vigo was something altogether new and exciting - even if it's straight out of a typical 'football tourism' manual.

Things could have been very different because having planned a trip around Europe, two particular games stood out on this weekend. One was this game and the other was a Ligue 1 clash between Nantes and Lorient at Stade De La Beaujoire in North-West France simply, mainly because that's a stadium I've long since wanted to visit (yet still haven't managed to do so).

In the end, Barcelona got the nod... sometimes you just make the right choice!

I'd arrived in the city a day prior to the game following a mammoth 14-hour coach journey from Paris which had cost just £1.50 (cheers Megabus) so I spent plenty of time unwinding and enjoying the many, many, many sights and attractions here beforehand.

I'd decided to make my way to the Nou Camp using the metro system. The journey was pretty straightforward, taking 20 minutes, and passed relatively smoothly - joining the train at Passeig De Gracia (located not that far from Las Ramblas) and alighting with the masses at Les Corts, which is situated around a ten-minute walk away.

Surprisingly, the Camp Nou doesn't look that big from the outside because in a similar fashion to the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, the pitch is actually below ground level. Nevertheless, once you're inside, it's hard not to be amazed by the sheer size of the place. I can testify that the steps leading up to the seats in the top tier are VERY steep but you do get a quality view over the city.

One thing that took me totally by surprise is that the game wasn't anywhere close to a sell-out. By kick-off, there were still hundreds of vacant seats everywhere in the ground and the attendance was later given as just 70,000 - about 30,000 short of its full capacity. It's difficult to imagine such a scenario happening in the Premier League at say Manchester United or Liverpool, or at any of the top-flight clubs in London.

The game itself will always be remembered because of Lionel Messi's pass penalty to Luis Suarez, but in a tepid first half, which never really got going, the Argentinian produced a moment of magic - curling a 25-yard free-kick into the top corner to give the hosts an early advantage. Celta Vigo, something of a nuisance team to Barcelona in recent years, hit back thanks to a penalty from John Guidetti and surprisingly looked comfortable as the score was 1-1 at the interval.

Nevertheless, in the second half, despite Celta's best efforts and a couple of spells where they posed some real questions of their counterparts, Barcelona kicked into action. Suarez made it 2-1 on the hour mark, before doubling his personal tally for the evening with a quarter of an hour remaining. I don't know what the Spanish is for 'throwing the towel in' but from going 3-1 down, that's exactly what Vigo did.

That great moment, which took the world by storm, then occurred a couple of minutes later when Messi deservedly won a spot-kick. My expectation was that with Suarez on a hat-trick, the diminutive superstar would step aside and let the ex-Liverpool man take responsibility. What happened next couldn't have been predicted by anyone as Messi nonchalantly laid the ball into Suarez's path - thus allowing the Uruguayan to pick his spot. Clever? Yes. Cheeky? Most definitely. However, I think if I'd been a Celta Vigo defender, then I'd have gone in with a crunching challenge at the next available opportunity, as scoring such a goal could quite easily be perceived as taking the p*ss.

With fans inside the Camp Nou now in raptures (and with their counterparts already suffering a public humiliation), Barca added two more goals to compound Celta's misery with Ivan Rakitic and Neymar adding their names to the score-sheet in the final five minutes or so.

A 6-1 victory for Barcelona. Nobody would have predicted that at half-time!

Getting away from the busy streets around the stadium afterwards wasn't quite as straightforward as I would have hoped. Queues into Les Corts for the metro were extremely long, so with a map in hand I opted for what proved to be a 45-minute walk back into the city centre.

With drizzle soon turning into heavy rain amidst muggy temperatures, I smelt absolutely delightful by the time I eventually made it back to the hostel where I was staying... but what a brilliant experience it was to be in such an iconic stadium for such an iconic moment.