Barcelona are in unknown territory as UNDERDOGS for Champions League last-eight with Bayern Munich

As if this Champions League were not strange enough tonight we’ll see something we haven’t seen for well over a decade: Barcelona go into a game as underdogs.

Putting a date on the last time it happened opens a debate. It was maybe 2008 when Frank Rijkaard’s Barcelona faced Manchester United in the semi-final and Sir Alex Ferguson’s team won 1-0 on aggregate en-route to winning in Moscow.

A year later Pep Guardiola was Barça's new young coach and some might have called Bayern Munich favourites when they faced Barcelona in the quarter-finals but Barça beat them 4-0 at the Camp Nou, going through 5-1 on aggregate.

In the period since, when they have won the trophy three times it’s difficult to think of a tie they started not as the fancied winners.

The last time they won the European Cup in 2015 they took on Bayern Munich in the semi-finals and beat them 5-3 over two legs. The outstanding individual in both those previous meetings was Lionel Messi.

He produced one of the moments of the history of the tournament in 2015 when he made Jerome Boateng look like he’d taken an invisible punch to the jaw just inside the area.

Messi scored twice in the 2009 game too. If Barça are to win against the odds tonight he will need to be at his best again.

The big difference between now and then is that in ‘09 Messi was joined in attack by Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto’o who both scored in that 4-0. And in 2015 he had Neymar for company. The Brazilian got the third in the 3-0 win.

On Friday night Luis Suarez will be alongside him, but he is still getting back to full fitness after the knee operation in January that he thought had ruled him out for the rest of the season. And there really is no ‘third man’.

Antoine Griezmann is the willing volunteer. He has scored important goals this season but coach Quique Setien might not even start him.

Earlier in the week the messages coming out of the Barcelona camp seemed to suggest it would be Artur Vidal as an extra man in midfield at Griezmann’s expense.

‘Extra muscle for Bayern’ read one headline. That was another sign of the changing times – a Barcelona team picked to deal with the opponent’s threat.

That would never have happened when they were in their pomp under Pep and later Luis Enrique.

Messi at least is fit despite training this week with strapping on the ankle kicked by Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly in the last-16 second leg.

He got them past the Italian side, winning the corner for the first, scoring the second and winning the penalty for the third goal in the 3-1 win.

‘Without the strength of the team Leo will be less effective,’ said Setien on Thursday night. Some saw that as him talking down Messi’s importance. It seemed more like him trying to talk up the role of some of the supporting cast who will need to raise their game to support the lead tonight.

Bayern are on a run of 26 wins and one draw in their last 27 games. Their favourite status against a Barcelona side who came back after lockdown on top of La Liga but then drew three and lost one of their last 11 games and so were overtaken by Champions Real Madrid who dropped only two points.

So far speed and intensity have ruled in Lisbon. Leipzig played a million a miles an hour to get past Atletico last night. Atalanta did likewise 24 hours earlier and Paris Saint Germain had to match their rhythm to beat them.

Barcelona have not played with that pace for a while now. Even when they beat Liverpool 3-0 last season at the Camp Nou, Messi and Suarez were doubled over catching their breath midway through the game, struggling against Liverpool’s high tempo.

Barcelona have Ousmane Dembele back six months after an operation on a hamstring tendon but he has not played for nine months and it is a big ask for him to step forward and find his old Borussia Dortmund form against the German Champions.

Suarez, Griezmann and possibly 17-year-old Ansu Fati off the bench will be there to help him but the weight of expectation will be on Messi’s shoulders.

He is used to it. If he can carry the weight of Argentina then he can do the same for Barcelona. His detractors say he doesn't deliver for Argentina and that he can’t be considered the best ever without a World Cup.

This Champions League feels like a World Cup. Messi lifting the European Cup a week Sunday wont match it, but it will come close, and even more so achieved in a team of 'plucky underdogs'.