Have Barcelona been given a lucky break in their UCL campaign?

Messi’s body landed onto the floor in a starfish shape, his head looking up into the inky blue sky the open terrace of the Camp Nou allowed him. A few seconds he lay there before the inky blueness was covered by a flashing concoction of claret and navy; FC Barcelona shirts were piling on top of him, as he had just scored one of the goals of his life.

German defender Jérôme Boateng has won 9 (nine) Bundesliga titles, has two Champions League winners’ medals and a World Cup to his name. But when Lionel Messi sent his legs spinning, intertwining with one another like a mixture of a tumbling figure skater and a melting plasticine figure, none of his trophies mattered. The Argentine’s power of making the world stop spinning for everyone else except himself, causing dizziness and - most importantly for him - an inability for opposition players to tackle him, was in full effect on that everyone remembers in the Camp Nou.

But the spiralling sensation that Boateng never really recovered from was not the end of the night, because Messi still had to beat Manuel Neuer. The angle was tight, the pressure was on but he was always going to do it, wasn’t he? The almost insulting carelessness with which Messi lifted the ball over the goalkeeper’s head was what sent the Camp Nou into pandemonium and the goal scorer spreading out on the floor in jubilation.

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Nowadays, things are different. Barcelona don’t have Lionel Messi and his powers to make defenders fumble and walk like chickens. In fact, they have, under Xavi Hernández, struggled to find the spark that they so badly need. The Champions League comes around next week and anything they can get ahold of they will grab and not let go, a moment needed from somewhere, a light in the darkness. Ultimately, they know their fate is out of their hands, with Inter grabbing a point in Spain it meant that the Catalan club could not depend anymore on their own results to see them through.

But maybe someone is shining a dim torch on them from somewhere. Today, Bayern boss Julian Nagelsmann has announced that Manuel Neuer is “still feeling pain” in his shoulder and is “likely to miss the game against Barcelona”, with the coach preferring to keep him on ice until after the mid-week match: “we are aiming for a return against Mainz”, said the coach in the pre-Hoffenheim press conference.

Midfielder Thomas Müller is also out for the weekend, but Nagelsmann says he think he “will be back for the Champions League game”. Nerves in Cataluña will already be jangling, with the fans and players knowing that a miracle of epic proportions is needed. They have had them before, and fine margins, such as the absence of players like Neuer, might just give them hope.