Thoughts on fabulous FC Barcelona – the best team ever?

Seriously, it’s just part of the human condition, I think. We all enjoy the thought that we might be living an important moment of history. Plus, I suppose it makes us feel personally more important, to be writing about the best team, the best player, the best game, the best final … whatever.

All that said … I’ll play the “best” card today. I believe FC Barcelona deserve it.

I wanted to watch and enjoy the Champions League final today, preferring to view it as a soccer fan and interested spectator, rather than observing as a journalist. Without an assignment per se, I had that luxury.

So I won’t write much about it all. You can find breakdowns, analysis and, yes, hyperbole flowing like bubbly in the Barca changing room right now at sites elsewhere. Personally, I’d love you to check the clever chatter at SI.com and maybe this heady blog in the SB Nation umbrella.

But I will offer this: Barcelona is the best club side I’ve ever seen.

Look, I wasn’t around to see the fabulous Real Madrid sides of the late 1950s, and was too young for the stylish, ahead-of-their-time Ajax clubs of the early 1970s. The AC Milan sides of the late 80s and early 90s? Well, I was in college and just trying to … ahem, you can probably figure out what I was trying to do in college.

Anyway. This Barca side truly is something else. It’s not just the Champions League triumphs (two in three years now). Pep Guardiola’s boys are playing a different game. Their exquisite passing, control and possession is a sight to behold. We’ve all seen games that look like your old high school varsity-vs.-JV scrimmages. But to do it against mighty Manchester United, a damn good side itself? I was just speechless in some moments.

Leo Messi is magic, highly deserving of every accolade, decoration and honor that comes his way. Andres Iniesta and Xavi are artist-geniuses with the ball. Sergio Busquets has just the right bite to go with his own wonderful skill. Same for center back Gerard Pique. (And Carles Puyol for that matter, even if he made only a cameo Saturday.) I could go on, up and down the side.

The entire side’s ability to create space and maintain the tidiest of control is like none I’ve ever seen. Their overall tactical awareness and individual attention to spacing and efficient movement off the ball is sublime. Their passing precision (giving the ball to the correct foot, for instance, at just the right moment) is utterly enlightened. Their footwork is perennially bright and active. And consider that the level of fitness required for that pressing game is something most of can’t fathom.

Take all that and layer in Barcelona’s dearest desire to play the beautiful game the way it should be played, and color me ultimately impressed.

It’s all wrapped in a bundle of collective skill that was enough to overwhelm a team that just claimed EPL honors, perhaps the global game’s most difficult league title to claim. How about that?

See … there’s that hyperbole I talked about.

But in this case, I think it's justified. Barcelona is the best side I've personally ever seen, and by some margin, too.