Give Barcelona an inch, and the five-time European champion will take a mile.

Few sides will understand that better than Chelsea, who on Wednesday slumped out of the Champions League last-16 stage courtesy of a 3-0 second-leg defeat at the Camp Nou.

Lionel Messi gave the host a third-minute lead, and instead of withdrawing into its habitual defensive shell, Chelsea was on the front foot. Eden Hazard, Willian, and Olivier Giroud were the principal parts of an attack probing Barcelona’s backline in search of an equaliser, and the Blues appeared the more likely of the two sides to score next.

And then, for the umpteenth time in a celebrated career, Messi happened.

The magical Argentine found a surging Ousmane Dembele, whose first goal for the Catalan giant doubled its lead in the 20th minute, giving Barcelona a 3-1 advantage on aggregate.

Same story, different half, as Chelsea showed attacking intent after the break only for Barcelona to take full advantage of the littlest opportunities. Cesar Azpilicueta played an uncharacteristically poor pass under pressure from Andre Gomes that Jordi Alba intercepted and found Messi, who like Dembele’s goal, found the back of the net with an effort that Thibaut Courtois will regret. It meant 3-0 to Barcelona, 4-1 on aggregate, tie done.

It was Messi’s 100th Champions League goal in just 123 appearances, joining Cristiano Ronaldo as the only players to bag a century of tallies on the continent.

That’s now a record 24 victories against English opponents in Europe’s top-tier tournament, and the 11th season on the trot where Barcelona has made the last eight.

Chelsea will feel like it deserved better, especially after Willian gave the west London lot a surprise lead in the first leg at Stamford Bridge only for Messi to level matters. For a team that has been known to fancy a false nine and a compact midfield, Chelsea was expansive at the Camp Nou, and could have drawn a penalty in the second half when wing-back Marcos Alonso was brought down in the penalty area by Gerard Pique.

It wasn’t to be, nor was progression to the last eight for the first time since 2013-14. Such is the plight of a side faced with the unenviable task of beating Barcelona on club football’s biggest stage.

Barcelona will now await Friday’s draw, with Ernesto Valverde’s lot set to face one of Real Madrid, Sevilla, Liverpool, Manchester City, Juventus, Roma, or Bayern Munich.

Antonio Conte was not talking about Leo Messi, but he might as well have been. “Everyone is good at asking questions,” the Chelsea manager told Corriere della Sera last May. “The phenomenons are those who go out and get.”

He was, in fact, ruminating on life as a manager, and the tricky art of building a team when you do not have direct control of the purse strings. Conte has never made a secret of his frustrations over the thinness of Chelsea’s squad or his lack of control when it comes to transfer policy. Yet, on the night his team was knocked out of the Champions League, his words felt apt in a different context.

Chelsea had asked stern questions of Barcelona over the two legs of this last-16 tie. At Stamford Bridge, Conte’s team stifled Messi and company for 75 minutes, drawing up in tight lines that left no space for the La Liga leaders to play through before countering at pace. But after Willian gave Chelsea a deserved lead, a single sloppy pass from Andreas Christensen gifted Barcelona with an easy equaliser.

At the time, it felt like an injustice: an accident of fate. But by the end of Wednesday’s second leg rout at the Camp Nou, the context had changed.

Messi’s opener might have felt like another cruel twist. There were barely two minutes gone at the Camp Nou when he exchanged passes with Ousmane Dembele and darted into the penalty area down the right. The Frenchman’s return ball was off target, but bounced kindly off Chelsea’s Marcos Alonso and back to Luis Suarez, who found Messi with a fresh through-ball. The Argentinian converted from close range.

Fortunate? Certainly. But how could we ever look upon such incident as an anomaly? Any team can benefit from a deflected pass or lucky bounce, but there might not be another side in the world that exploits such moments as ruthlessly as Barcelona.

The conversion of chances

A whopping 16 teams have averaged more shots per game in this season’s competition than the Catalans. They include such modest outfits as Benfica and Spartak Moscow. But despite taking fewer attempts than either side, Messi and Co. have outscored the pair of them, combined.

In part, that is because Barcelona carves out better chances. Shots can be a misleading statistic, placing desperation blasts from 40 yards on a par with easy tap-ins from close range. It is also true, though, that quality finishing decides games at this level. And Barcelona can boast the very best.

The truth is that Chelsea played well again here. Even after falling behind so early, it continued to take the game to its hosts. Chelsea hit the woodwork twice and had several more worthy opportunities. And yet, it never scored. Barcelona did, extending its lead through Dembele in the 20th minute before Messi made it 3-0 midway through the second-half.

Conte might call it a question of experience, having cited his own team’s lack thereof in this competition during the days leading up to the game. But this was Dembele’s first Champions League appearance for Barcelona and his second season playing in the competition. It was also his first-ever goal for his new club.

He profited from a sensational assist by Messi, with the Argentinian spotting a run that no other person inside the Camp Nou might have seen. It is also true that Conte, so outspoken on the subject of transfers, has never had €147 million to spend on a single player, as Barcelona did on Dembele.

When we reflect on this tie, though, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the difference between the two teams was less wide than the scoreline suggests. What Chelsea was missing, most of all, was a player capable of making its own chances count.

Wasted opportunities

Or would it be more accurate to say that it did have such a player, but simply neglected to use him? Alvaro Morata played 30 minutes out of 180, coming off the bench late in each leg. Could he have been the man to make Chelsea’s chances count? Recent performances suggest not, yet he has produced on big Champions League nights before now, back in his days at Juventus.

More pointedly, Chelsea’s board might ask how a player whom it spent more than €60 million to acquire, and who had scored seven goals already by the end of September, has fallen into such a rut. Conte’s recent remark that the player had sat on the bench in Madrid and Turin, as well, was never going to go down well.

The expectation is that Chelsea will part ways with the Italian manager in the summer – if not before. That is how things go under Roman Abramovich, who has sacked eight managers (not counting the caretakers) since buying the club in 2003. Conte’s fractious relationship with the board would likely have precluded a long tenure even with results better than he has achieved this season.

Chelsea would be naive to imagine that changing the man in the dugout will be enough to change the outcome on nights such as this. Conte made mistakes, but his team played Barcelona well for most of this tie. What they lacked were goals. It takes more than a manager to get those.

(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)

Lionel Messi doesn’t need much introduction. He’s one of the greatest players to ever grace a pitch, and an attraction who brings thousands of tourists to Barcelona each year. He’s the soul of this great era at the Camp Nou, and always the envy of managers in the opposing dugout.

Asked why Chelsea lost to Barcelona in the Champions League round of 16 on Wednesday, defender Marcos Alonso simply said, “They have Lionel Messi.”

The diminutive Argentine has always featured prominently for the Catalan outfit – the sheen on his game never wore off – but this season has been different. Messi is creating from deeper positions, stretching defences out wide, and making a difference in the penalty area.

Related: Messi, Dembele clinical as Barcelona bounces Chelsea

He was clinical in the latest tie, scoring off three of his four shots against Chelsea to single-handedly swing the result in Barcelona’s favour. But while the goals were important, Messi’s assist to Ousmane Dembele captured the very best of his game. The 30-year-old won possession in midfield, eluded defenders as he roared downfield on the counter-attack, and then spotted the Frenchman with an incisive pass through the middle of the 18-yard box. He did all of this against his so-called bogey team, having been shut out in eight previous appearances against the Blues.

If not for Messi’s contributions, Chelsea would’ve had a legitimate chance of advancing. The Blues pushed Barcelona as much as they could over two legs, and on Wednesday in particular, as the Blaugrana eschewed tradition by ceding swaths of possession to the visitor. The Camp Nou, a longtime theatre for tiki-taka, is now playing host to a more ruthless Barcelona side, one that’s doing damage with fewer passes. Opponents are suffering fewer deaths by a million cuts, and instead more swift blows to the gut. And Messi is usually the one delivering them.

(Photo courtesy: Getty Images)

He’s had to take on a greater workload as a result of the change in tactics, and it’s a burden he’s content to carry. Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde’s switch to a 4-4-2 formation made the team more compact, but it also liberated Messi. His touches on the ball have increased, sometimes ranging between 100 and 150 per match, which are the kind of gaudy numbers that midfield metronome Xavi used to register. Messi’s taking on multiple jobs, running the midfield while preserving enough energy to join the attack. His pace is an underappreciated part of his repertoire, and it’s helped him execute Valverde’s orders.

The manager has achieved a happy medium here. It’s difficult to preach a more conservative philosophy at a club like Barcelona, considering its illustrious history of attacking football, but he knew it could be done with Messi around.

And the star is certainly keeping audiences enthralled while Valverde prioritises fundamentals.

All the talk Wednesday was about Messi’s brilliance, not Barcelona’s 29 clean sheets in 46 matches this season. If there’s been any void left in attack, Messi has filled it.

“This type of player, there is one born in every 50 years,” Chelsea manger Antonio Conte said after Wednesday’s match, according to The Telegraph. “We are talking about one single player with this capacity, with this ability, with these skills. He’s fantastic. For sure, we are talking about a player who is able to move the final result for the team for whom he is playing.”

Messi’s had to anchor this team as if it’s Argentina, doing all the leg work to keep the attack humming. The national team has long relied on Messi’s match-winning abilities, and only reached the upcoming 2018 World Cup because of his timely hat-trick against Ecuador in the final round of qualifiers. It’s the same now at Barcelona, which is asking Messi to be what he is: one of the greatest players of all time.