I don’t think anyone was surprised when it took Lionel Messi less then three minutes to open his Champions League scoring account at home to Celtic. What may have surprised people was that Celtic didn’t immediately melt away like many expected them to. Instead they hung in there giving Barcelona a match.
20 minutes later Celtic won a penalty where they had the chance to tie the game. Up stepped hat-trick hero from their win over Rangers at the weekend Moussa Dembele with a chance to level the score.
The miss was a dagger for Celtic, but not as big as the dagger that came three minutes later, when Messi and Neymar combined for some brilliant passing to set up Messi’s second goal of the game.