It is the reason often given for why Americans will never fall for football en masse. They struggle, the argument runs, to see the beauty in soccer’s goalless draws. Those most influential Americans, the Glazers, may have appreciated something of beauty in the 90 minutes Manchester United shared with Barcelona at the Nou Camp last Wednesday night, but watching, as ever, from a distance, they would be obliged to admit the beauty had mainly been Barça’s.

Most of the United staff involved owned up to that. “You have to say Barça had most of the possession,” said Carlos Tevez, whose satisfaction at gaining a place in the starting lineup would be weighed up against the requirement that he be ready to numb most of his attacking instincts.

Early on, Tevez would find himself making a challenge on an accelerating Samuel Eto’o in his own penalty area as, effectively, the last United defender. “The manager told me that I had to play a lot deeper,” explained the Argentina striker, “and chase Yaya Toure.” Toure needed monitoring and stood out even with Tevez on his tail, but that would be true of each member of Barcelona’s midfield, whose elegance at distributing the ball and at carrying it forward reminded an anxious majority of the 95,000 at the Nou Camp just why Barça have been the most pleasing-to-the-eye of all the European Cup-winners this side of the millennium.

The Real Madrid of six years ago may have had more individual panache, Milan more sustained success, but the club that Frank Rijkaard took from nonstarters in the Champions League when he took over as head coach in 2003 and three seasons later had them as its winners, have embraced most thoroughly the idea that success can and should be built on having the highest share of what happens in open play.

Sometimes it can leave Barcelona looking as if they perversely ignore the options that their competitors make more and more their priority. Like height and muscle: only one member of Barcelona’s front six last Wednesday stands over 6ft. Or like set-pieces. Barça have not scored a goal from a direct free kick since early November, a statistic that above all makes them remember what Ronaldinho, now discarded and waiting to move on in the summer, used to be relied on to do even if he was having a quiet day.

Barcelona have been obliged recently to wistfully remember what they used to be, when they combined successive Spanish league titles with the 2006 Champions League. In the first leg against United, they exchanged possession so cleanly and pushed forward with far greater purpose than they had for all of 2008. One obvious cause was the return to the starting XI after six weeks out with an injury of the Portugal international Deco, a footballer always making himself available to be the third point in any triangle of passes.

Lionel Messi also started his first European match since early March, and his cute sombrero – as the Spanish call the trick where you lob the ball over an opponent’s head and collect it before it hits the grass on the other side – against Patrice Evra would be the evening’s Olé moment. The United left-back was always aware that particular duel would be among the game’s most scrutinised, and he felt pleased with the outcome.

“It was a big test for me,” said Evra. Soaring reputations, he added, were not to be held in awe. “Even if Messi had played very well and I had played a bad game I’m not going to say, ‘Yeah, it’s because your name is Messi’. Against a player like that, the only special thing you do is just concentrate more.” United’s strategy of containment worked. Barcelona’s bewitching football brought no goals and ultimately an incomplete replica of the championship-winning football that the survivors of the 2006 team – Rafa Marquez, Xavi, Deco, Andres Iniesta and Eto’o – would recall. “Our players realised that Barcelona always get a lot of possession of the ball,” noted Sir Alex Ferguson, the United manager, “because the Nou Camp is a big pitch and they always have a spare man in midfield, which makes it difficult for opposing teams. On Wednesday they played Iniesta wide left and they never normally do that but they did it because he could come off the line and make an extra midfield player and that’s why Wayne [Rooney] was playing wide on the right. They weren’t bothered about having extra width on the left because Eric Abidal would have eventually got up there so that was something we had to contend with. It’s been a strength of theirs over the years and it’s how they have operated. They get a lot of possession.”

For all their momentum, the runs and movements of those in the final 20 yards would create little discomfort for Edwin van der Sar, most of them anticipated by a United defence missing Nemanja Vidic because of illness and without their first-choice right-back Gary Neville.

United, the best and most potent team in English football, had been reshaped in the expectation that the momentum would be Barcelona’s. Wes Brown and Owen Hargreaves occupied positions they have become less accustomed to, as did Tevez and Rooney. Cristiano Ronaldo can also be said not to have been quite himself: he missed a goalscoring opportunity from a dead-ball, his penalty off target.

“At this stage of the competition and playing against the players that we are tonight, you’re not always going to play your own way and you have to adapt,” explained Michael Carrick. “I thought the lads were brilliant in what we did. It will be a different game next week, of course.”

Some lessons had been absorbed from last year’s defeat in the semi-final against Milan, where the first leg at Old Trafford featured five goals, three for United but two for Milan that the Italians would build into a comfortable aggregate advantage when they met again in Italy. “It’s hard to compare but the performance in Barcelona showed a different side,” said Carrick. “It showed that when we haven’t got a lot of the ball we can see the game out and defend really well as a team. We always have that threat with the players that we’ve got, but tonight it didn’t really click in a lot of ways going forward. Coming to places like this you can’t expect your own way all the time.”

Quite how much booty United can claim from a 0-0 in the first leg away is another matter. Their own precedents are mildly discouraging. The last time United could call themselves defending European champions, in 2000, they went to Spain for a quarter-final first leg, and pronounced themselves satisfied with a 0-0 draw at Real Madrid. They lost the Old Trafford follow-up 3-2. Another quarter-final trip to Monaco, two years earlier, finished without score, and a 1-1 in the return leg would be enough for the French team to progress.

The superstitious will also note with apprehension that of the eight times United have appeared in the last four of European Cups, six have marked the end of the line. The away-goals rule was decisive when Bayer Leverkusen finished United’s journey in the last but one of those semis, in 2002.

A more expansive United, a more recognisable United – there had been few sneers in Spain about the cagey posture this swashbuckling club took at the Nou Camp – is expected at Old Trafford, but the away-goals rule can prey on the mind. The optimism around Barcelona is nourished by the idea that an initial strike – from Eto’o, or Messi, perhaps the teenager Bojan Krkic, perhaps from Thierry Henry, for whom an evening back on an English pitch may awaken some of the goalscoring instincts that have deserted him for much of his first season in Spain – would double United’s workload.

Despite their lean recent form, Barcelona did manage to score four goals in total in their past two away matches in Europe, but most of the optimism from within Barça comes from the fluency of their football on Wednesday, the sight of old routines recovered, the idea that the most globally watched match of their season so far had recaptured some of what their club likes to be famous for: its style.

Spanish papers gloating already

- The Spanish press were not over impressed with United at the Nou Camp. ‘Deco wants his third European Cup’ declared Sport, adding ‘Who says Barça can’t win at Old Trafford?’

- Marca, referring to Real Madrid’s interest in Cristiano Ronaldo, advised ‘True Real players don´t miss penalties at Camp Nou (although you did favour to Spanish football)’

- Sports daily, Mundo Deportivo, trumpeted ‘It’s possible! Now the fans believe even more than before’. La Vanguardia agreed, saying ‘It is clear Barça can qualify’ n Since the competition began in 1992-93 there have been 20 goalless fi rst legs in knockout ties with 14 of the home teams in the second leg going through. However, United have twice gone out after a 0-0 draw away, to Monaco in 1998 and Real Madrid in 2000

TV match Man Utd (0) v Barcelona (0)
Tuesday, ITV1, 7.30pm; kick-off 7.45pm