IN THE end, critics will be tempted to conclude that in the battle between the two great icons of modern football, namely Barcelona’s Lionel Messi and Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo, it was Barca’s Argentine who ran out the winner.

If you choose to view a team’s performance through the looking glass of one individual’s display, then you sometimes arrive at some very unreliable conclusions.

Yes, Messi ended up as the matchwinner but that is not to say that Ronaldo did not pull his weight nor give it his best shot.

In the build-up to this game there were those tempted to suggest that if Ronaldo does better than Messi, then United would win. Yet, football can sometimes be more complex and subtle than that.

It will be of little or indeed no solace to disappointed United fans this morning to reflect that of the two “world stars”, it was their man who made much the better start and who for most of the opening 45 minutes looked as if he could yet turn the match United’s way.

While Messi was almost completely absent from the opening exchanges, Ronaldo had started the game as if it was only a matter of time before he found the back of the net.

So dominant a figure was he in his central striker role in the first half that after 45 minutes of play, every United effort on goal, bar one free kick from Ryan Giggs, had gone through him.

Only two minutes into the game, he had put the heart crossways among the Barcelona fans with a trademark, low and hard free kick that had Victor Valdes scrambling and fumbling.

Furthermore in that opening period, he had shot narrowly wide on four occasions while, when it came to a United corner kick, he it was who got into the heart of the box to head over the bar.

While Ronaldo was in the thick of everything that United did in the opening spell, Messi took much longer to work his way into his position and into the game.

By half-time, he had managed only two moments worthy of note, one a splendid free kick just over the bar and the other an exciting little run into the United box that, ominously, had come in the dying minutes of the first half.

Yet, if Ronaldo won the clash of the titans in the first half, Messi clearly won it in the second. The Argentine had started slowly not out of stage fright but rather because he did not seem to believe, as to some extent Ronaldo did, that it was all “down to him”. He made himself useful but eschewed trying anything outrageous.

When Messi is “useful”, however, he causes real headaches for a defence. Not only is he a perfect cog in the flowing Barca machine but his movement off the ball can be deceptive, and never more so that when, as the smallest man on the pitch, he rounded off the Barca scoring, heading home superbly the 72nd -minute second Barcelona goal.

Ronaldo cannot be faulted for effort but neither his shooting from play nor his free-kick taking were as devastating as usual. The Portuguese never dropped his head, however, battling away to the end as witness the yellow card he picked up in the 78th minute after a foul born of pure frustration when he clattered into Barca captain Carles Puyol.

In a Tuesday pre-match press conference, Ronaldo had been quizzed about his chances of winning this year’s European and World Player of the Year awards.

“If I do well tomorrow night,” he answered, “then I will have a good chance of winning that title but, for the time being, I am concentrated on winning the Champions League.”

In fairness, Ronaldo played like that, concentrated on the job on a night when things did not go either his or United’s way.

Fortunately for Barca, however, Messi was a picture of concentration and class too.

At the end of the night, the Argentine may well have won himself not only a Champions League medal but also the European and World Player of the Year titles. He will be a gloriously deserving winner.