Inexplicably at the Nou Camp last night, Sir Alex Ferguson picked a team seemingly designed to showcase Barcelona’s attacking talents. It is not the sort of invitation that Lionel Messi is going to turn down.

That the Manchester United manager got away with his misguided team selection, just as he did famously in the Champions League final here in 1999, should not mask the indisputable truth that Barcelona dominated this match, in part because Ferguson allowed them to.

With the United manager surprisingly reverting to the flat four-man midfield of old after winning just about every big game in recent memory with a solid three-man central base, it was left to Rio Ferdinand to hold Barcelona at bay. The England defender was magnificent, which is just as well. Had the Catalan cavaliers not given such a fine impression of Arsenal — brilliant football, shame about the finishing touch — the English champions would be staring at a deficit going into the second leg at Old Trafford on Tuesday.

There was much to admire about Barcelona, but nothing more than the scuttling little figure of Messi. Do not send in those voting slips for World Player of the Year yet. Cristiano Ronaldo may be a shoo-in for the individual accolades in England, but last night there was a rush of fresh applications for the Messi fan club.

Plenty of heirs to the great Diego Maradona have been acclaimed in Argentina, but few have come as close as Messi to justifying the hype. He has even been known to wear boots with La Mano de Dios — The Hand of God — stitched into the leather and he once punched a ball into the net like his idol. There was no need for dark arts last night, only dazzling skills, such as the flick over Patrice Evra’s head that dumbfounded the Barclays Premier League’s best left back.

One newspaper wheeled out Trevor Francis on match day to state the case for why Messi is a better player than Ronaldo. With due respect to the former Sheffield Wednesday manager, most of us prefer to admire rather than make impossible comparisons.

The locals, who had paid Ronaldo the respect of jeering him before kick-off, revelled in the Portuguese’s failed penalty kick, which jarred with everything that has gone before in his remarkable campaign.

Messi — once compared to a bloodhound who has picked up a scent — did not score either and he was substituted shortly after the hour mark. That had everything to do with a lack of match sharpness (45 minutes in five weeks because of a thigh injury that meant he left the stadium with an ice pack strapped to his leg) and nothing to do with his performance, which included dashing runs and angled passes that wrong-footed the whole of the Nou Camp, not just Wes Brown.

Messi is only 20 and it is tempting to wonder what he might become, but that would be greedy. He required growth hormones as a schoolboy — indeed, it was Barcelona’s willingness to pay for his treatment that persuaded the family to emigrate from South America — and a frustrating injury record suggests that we should enjoy him while we can.

He departed to a standing ovation and you could not have guessed his lack of match action any more than you could detect the supposed disarray in the Barcelona ranks. Frank Rijkaard’s squad has been a disunited mess and seven points from eight games have left them third in La Liga.

On last night’s evidence, heaven help United if they find their best form by next week. They had 65 per cent of possession in the first half and lacked only the goal, which allowed Ferguson to claim, unconvincingly, that everything had gone to plan.

You would have struggled to persuade Wayne Rooney that this was how the match was meant to unfold. Picked as an orthodox right winger, he seemed to have several acres to himself out on the flank.

Fabio Capello, the England manager, has doubts about the striker’s finishing, but Rooney did not even get close to the penalty area before he was hauled off in the 75th minute. Perhaps Ferguson was happy with his positional discipline, but with Carlos Tévez anonymous through the middle, it seemed a misuse of Rooney’s talent.

It is all to play for in the second leg, when United will, surely, be more adventurous, but first Ferguson needs to pick the right XI. That means no place for Park Ji Sung, an end to Rooney’s solitary confinement and Owen Hargreaves or Anderson reinforcing midfield. Having played into Barcelona’s hands last night, next week United must revert to their strengths.

Missed again

2 Penalties missed by Ronaldo this season - the first one was in Manchester United’s 2-1 defeat by West Ham United at Upton Park in December. He has scored five - three in the league, one in the Champions League and one in the FA Cup.