The night Lionel Messi banished forever any doubts about his enduring genius

Awkward questions that he wasn’t as good as he’d been, that he had too much power at Camp Nou and had already decided that Tata Martino wasn’t the right man to manage the club. That he wasn’t the player he’s been, that injuries were starting to hinder his game, that his obsession with winning the World Cup was to the detriment of Barça, that Cristiano Ronaldo was now the best player in the world.

That was then.

You’ve all seen footage from Wednesday night, when, for 20 minutes before half time, Messi took the breath away from all in the 92,551 crowd, Barça’s biggest of the season.

That figure included the 4,700 travelling Manchester City fans high on a chilly third tier. Even they were silenced by Messi’s genius.

There were moments when Messi was so good that fans looked at each other in disbelief. When he nutmegged James Milner, the stadium roared with approval. Pep Guardiola, watching in the stands alongside his father rather than from any seat of privilege, put his head in his hands. He knows Messi better than anyone in football, yet the Bayern Munich boss couldn’t believe what he was seeing as the Argentine dominated and mesmerised.

Ivan Rakitic, Barça’s goalscorer and second best performer on the night, opined that even City players would have enjoyed watching Messi. Maybe not yet, but it will be one to tell the grandchildren about in years to come.

That the scoreline was kept at 1-0 was down to City enjoying good fortune and Joe Hart playing better than any goalkeeper at Camp Nou in memory. He was rightly praised by Messi, Luis Enrique et al as City became the last English team to exit the competition after another poor showing.

The mood was building up for it in Catalonia. The headline on Sport on the day of the game had been ‘The Dream Begins Today’. Messi lived up to that and while Barça’s players are rightly reluctant to be drawn on talk of a treble, they’re currently league leaders, in the final of the Copa del Rey (where they’ll meet Athletic Bilbao) and in the last eight of the Champions League for an eighth consecutive season, the first team to do so. It will be as big a surprise if they win no trophies as if they win all three.

Barça are improving month by month and, in contrast to Real Madrid, have hit their best form of the season at the right time. They had their wobble in January when a defeat at Real Sociedad brought headlines and talk of crisis. That it came two weeks after Real Madrid were crowned world champions didn’t help, but it wasn’t just because of what was happening on the pitch.

Last year was an awful one for Barça, partly because of their own doing, and while court cases remain for a variety of charges from fraud to tax evasion, their form on the pitch has picked up significantly.

The fall guy in the January disaster was sporting director Andoni Zubizarretta, who spent two years taking the rap for problems created by others and did so because he felt he had the support of his president. When the heat became too warm, the president, who faces charges of tax evasion which he denies, sacked him. Zubizarreta, a former goalkeeper, is a good football man who is now putting his time to use by learning English for four hours a day. He’ll be back and Barça will be too.

They’re not at the level of Guardiola’s side at their best, but then this is Luis Enrique’s first season in charge. He’s getting it right and his name was sung by the crowd of Wednesday more enthusiastically than any player bar Messi. Enrique has been surprisingly comfortable with the media, refusing to be drawn on loaded questions and holding his personality back. He seeks no relationships with journalists but fulfils the media commitments he has to.

He has changed Barca’s style of play by pushing them even higher and alternating tactics. He’s rotated players more too, not just in their number of games but where they play in them. So Rakitic was trusted to play as the number ‘4’ in front of the defence at Eibar last weekend in the absence of Sergio Busquets (who will be in Sunday’s clasico squad), but not at home to City where Javier Mascherano, the man responsible for a great “Football controls us but Messi controls football” post match quote, was given the role and Raktic pushed forward with great effect as he roamed around the midfield.

Miguel Angel Lotina, who managed six top-flight Spanish clubs, said: “Rakitic was the king of Sevilla, now he’s the slave at Barcelona.” This wasn’t meant as a slur, more a reference to the work he ably carries out in the Barça midfield.

Summing up the positive mood in the Barça camp ahead of Sunday night’s clasico, Rakitic, said: “We can't stop now, the most beautiful part of the season is coming now.”

Over 98,000 will attend what is surely the biggest game in the world so far this year. Enrique laughed off talk of his team being favourites as “pretentious” but they are. Just. And Madrid will be smarting seeing another global Messi love-in.

With Luis Suarez continuing to improve and gel with Messi and Neymar, who are both consistently excellent, it’s looking ominous for Barça’s opponents. But Madrid won the last clasico and they have the players to win this one.

In contrast to Rakitic, Messi doesn’t enjoy doing post match interviews, but there was no way he couldn’t speak after football’s finest performance of the year so far. Even though he didn't score, he was the stand out player over 180 minutes against City.

Messi complimented his team, complimented Cristiano Ronaldo too. Twelve goals behind his great rival before Christmas in the race for the Pichichi, he’s now two ahead with 32 league goals from his 43 in all competitions from Barça so far.

“Not too long ago I was a disaster,” said Messi after the City match. “I’m not going from being a disaster to being in my best form.”

The barbs stung and now he’s back with a vengeance. A photo from Wednesday captured Messi, both feet off the ground with the ball at his feet, looking for the next perfect pass. In the background, an advertising hoarding read: “Priceless”.

The football world is in agreement.