A little over 24 hours before kick-off, Hansi Flick spoke about how lucky he felt to have acquired Marcus Rashford on loan from Manchester United.<\/p>\n
Barcelona\u2019s manager was not remotely bothered that the forward\u2019s stock had fallen so far at Old Trafford. Rashford, he said, was a player he had long admired and could help improve.<\/p>\n
In the 82nd minute, Rashford walked off wreathed in smiles before being wrapped in Flick\u2019s heartfelt embrace. Ruben Amorim\u2019s bete noire had just scored two splendid goals that not merely rendered Eddie Howe\u2019s rather effective gameplan academic but silenced St James\u2019 Park.<\/p>\n
With Faustino Asprilla \u2013 the scorer of a famous hat-trick for Newcastle as Barcelona succumbed 3-2 on Tyneside in 1997 \u2013 having flown in from Colombia to help cheer on his old team, it was not supposed to be like this. Not even Anthony Gordon\u2019s 90th-minute consolation could upstage Rashford as Flick\u2019s players expertly managed seven minutes of stoppage time.<\/p>\n
Until then it was no night for slow coaches. Not with so many explosions of pace all over the pitch and on the respective right wings in particular. If Raphinha\u2019s rapid acceleration down that flank for Barcelona sometimes stretched Tino Livramento to the limit, the sprinting powers of Newcastle\u2019s Anthony Elanga often seemed utterly irresistible.<\/p>\n
From one such advance Elanga scorched past Gerard Mart\u00edn before crossing for Gordon but Newcastle\u2019s out-of-position centre-forward failed to make contact. Might Nick Woltemade have done better? Quite possibly, but Newcastle\u2019s \u00a370m Germany striker began on the bench after Howe sensibly decided three games in a week might be beyond the 6ft 6in new boy at this stage.<\/p>\n
Marcus Rashford hits a stunning shot past Nick Pope to put Barcelona 2-0 in front. Photograph: Daniel Chesterton\/Offside\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Newcastle\u2019s manager could certainly have done with Woltemade\u2019s sureness of touch as Harvey Barnes dinked the ball over Joan Garc\u00eda only to direct it wide of a post. On that occasion Barnes\u2019s blushes were spared by a linesman\u2019s offside flag but he would later be denied by the goalkeeper when clean through on the counterattack.<\/p>\n
Yet, if their finishing was found wanting, Newcastle initially pressed so hard and high they refused to allow the La Liga champions to assert any sustained midfield control.<\/p>\n
The danger was that if Newcastle even momentarily lost concentration, Raphinha or Rashford would race away from them. Rashford looked razor sharp and had home hearts in mouths after tricking Kieran Trippier before leaving the former England full-back trailing in his wake. He ultimately shot wide but Howe knew it represented a reprieve.<\/p>\n
With Flick\u2019s brightest talent, Lamine Yamal, back in Barcelona nursing his injured groin, opportunity beckoned for a Newcastle side cleverly mixing long balls with slick, short passing. Yet as well as they did to keep the match evenly balanced, Garc\u00eda was hardly troubled.<\/p>\n
Although Sandro Tonali, once again tremendous in midfield, prompted a series of promising moves and cross after cross flew into Barcelona\u2019s box, the lack of specialist striker ensured they came to nothing.<\/p>\n
Tonali\u2019s presence as a disruptor also dictated that Nick Pope remained generally well protected as Barcelona struggled to join their attacking dots and a frustrated Robert Lewandowski implored the referee to book his assiduous minder, Fabian Sch\u00e4r.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Yet by the 45th minute, Dan Burn collected a yellow card after catching Jules Kound\u00e9\u2019s ankle \u2013 a red card offence according to Flick \u2013 and Barcelona\u2019s patience had begun to pay off. In refusing to be drawn into a physical battle, the visitors increasingly managed the game well.<\/p>\n Faustino Asprilla mixes with the fans, 28 years after his famous hat-trick sealed a 3-2 victory over Barcelona for Newcastle. Photograph: Owen Humphreys\/PA<\/p>\n With Newcastle finally starting to tire, Barcelona\u2019s patience was reflected by some incisive passing sequences. The scene was set for Rashford to jog a few memories by connecting with the excellent Kound\u00e9\u2019s left-footed cross and flashing an unstoppable glancing header past Pope. A perfect fusion of power and accuracy, it was his first goal for Barcelona and arrived after he cleverly manoeuvred himself clear of Sch\u00e4r.<\/p>\n It served as the signal for Howe to finally introduce Woltemade as part of a quadruple substitution but, before the newcomers could make a difference, Rashford struck again.<\/p>\n If his opener was good, his second was sublime. Having dodged Tonali, he unleashed a 20-yard shot that pinged the crossbar en route to the back of the net. Rashford always tended to do well against Newcastle for Manchester United and it seems switching shirts has not lessened that appetite.<\/p>\n Although Gordon finally proved he can score after all by sliding home Murphy\u2019s cross at the far post, the first Englishman to score for Barcelona since Gary Lineker had already done enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A little over 24 hours before kick-off, Hansi Flick spoke about how lucky he felt to have acquired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-146275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}