Where would you fit Messi in Xavi's Barca?

Real Madrid enjoyed one of the easiest title wins in modern football history. What they won't stop marvelling about is how their arch-rivals revived themselves. They will rave about the 23 magical minutes old dogs Benzema and Modric took to dismantle an over-hyped PSG in the Champions League just a week before.

But it could all be reduced to a whisper when reminded of the hammering of Real Madrid by a strangely resurgent, curiously unaffected Barcelona side. If you're still missing out on Barca's electrifying galvanization - just as impossible it was to tear your eyes from the train wreck that they were less than season back - we suggest you sign up. The experience is still unfolding.

I n virtual freefall only a few months ago, under Xavi it seems they had elixir of footballing life on tap all along, but didn't know where it sat in the cavernous Camp Nou. Carried out by astonishingly talented - still young enough to make schoolboy errors - teens and twenty-somethings of La Masia, Barcelona 's return to form, favour and class is as improbable to believe as it is riveting and real. For example, simply take the case of the multi-faceted, much-experienced David Alaba in Sunday night's Clasico.

Having been part of the Bayern ensemble that headlined the humiliation of Barca in Europe a season or so back, Alaba of erstwhile Bayern fame was discovering rather uncomfortably a completely different taste of Barca as Alaba of current-day Real Madrid fame. How quickly things change, he must have thought, as balls whizzed past him for Barcelona's out of favour, soon to be journeymen strikers to score. In reality, though, the Clasico performance - the result, however flattering, still pales before the overall show - underlines how