page_title: 2009 UEFA Champions League Final
section_title: Reaction
hierarchical_section_title: 2009 UEFA Champions League Final / Reaction
caption_attribution_description: Català: Lionel Messi, jugador del Futbol Club Barcelona, durant el partit FC Barcelona-Deportivo de La Coruña. Español: Lionel Messi, jugador del Futbol Club Barcelona, durante el partido FC Barcelona-Deportivo de La Coruña. English: Lionel Messi, Futbol Club Barcelona's player, during the match FC Barcelona-Deportivo de La Coruña.
context_page_description: The 2009 UEFA Champions League Final was played on 27 May 2009 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Italy. The match determined the winners of the 2008–09 season of the UEFA Champions League, a tournament for the top football clubs in Europe. The match was won by Barcelona of Spain, who beat England's Manchester United 2–0. Samuel Eto'o opened the scoring in the 10th minute, and Lionel Messi added another goal 20 minutes from the end to earn Barcelona an historic treble of La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, a feat never before achieved by a Spanish club. The match was refereed by Swiss referee Massimo Busacca.
  This was Barcelona's third victory in the competition, 17 years after they first won the European Cup in 1992. Manchester United went into the match as the competition's defending champions, the first defending champions to reach the final since Juventus in 1997. Manchester United also sought to be the first team to retain the European Cup since A.C. Milan in 1990. It was the fifth year in a row in which the final involved at least one English team. The Stadio Olimpico had hosted three previous Champions League finals, in 1977, 1984 and 1996.
context_section_description: During the match, UEFA.com users were able to vote for their man of the match; the public vote went to the scorer of Barcelona's second goal, Lionel Messi. The UEFA Technical Study Group, however, chose the man who provided the cross for Messi's goal, Xavi, as their man of the match, citing his control of the tempo of the match as the reason for their decision. Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola took the time to give special praise to Messi, whom he said he moved back into the midfield in order to increase the team's effectiveness when in possession of the ball. Messi had been withdrawn from his usual right-wing role into a more central position, while Samuel Eto'o, who had started the match as Barcelona's lone centre-forward, was moved out to the right. Guardiola also lauded the bravery of his entire team, stating that he believed that his team's victory hinged on their hard work and propensity for taking risks in attack, but he admitted that although his side had had the best season in the history of the club, they were not yet the best Barcelona team.
  In the Manchester United camp, manager Alex Ferguson admitted that his team had been beaten by the better side and that the game was all but lost after the first goal. United forward Cristiano Ronaldo, however, criticised his team's tactics, saying that "everything went wrong". Ferguson paid tribute to Messi and the midfield partnership of Xavi and Iniesta, while Wayne Rooney lauded Iniesta as "the best player in the world". Ferguson also expressed his regret at the unavailability of midfielder Darren Fletcher, who was suspended for the match, and lamented at his side's "shoddy" defending and ineffectiveness when in possession. Nevertheless, Ferguson paid tribute to Guardiola's achievement of winning the treble in his first season of management. Barcelona's victory also made Guardiola only the sixth man to win the competition as both a player and a manager, following in the footsteps of Miguel Muñoz, Giovanni Trapattoni, Johan Cruyff, Carlo Ancelotti and, most recently, Frank Rijkaard, who also won the Champions League as Barcelona manager.
  The match turned out to be the last for Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez as Manchester United players, as Ronaldo completed a world record £80 million transfer to Real Madrid on 1 July, while Tevez chose not to make his loan spell with the club permanent and joined their local rivals, Manchester City. After announcing his intention to leave Manchester United, Tevez criticised Ferguson's team selection for the 2009 Champions League final, saying that Ferguson should have included him in the starting line-up, with the rationale that the match was the only final that Manchester United had lost in his time at the club.
  Television audiences for the final reached more than 10 million in both Spain and the United Kingdom. 11.3 million people watched the match on Spain's Antena 3 network – the largest viewing figures for that station in the past year – while another 600,000 watched on Canal+ Spain. In the United Kingdom, however, although the match received the highest ratings of any programme that evening, viewing figures were down by 1.5 million on the previous year's final, with just 9.6 million watching on ITV1, although an additional 1.79 million watched on Sky Sports 1. Despite there being no Italian or French representative in the final, the figures were much the same in those two countries as they were in Spain and the United Kingdom, with Italy's Rai Uno garnering an average viewership of 9.63 million and France's TF1 receiving 8.25 million. Only 6.55 million people watched the match on Germany's Sat.1 channel. According to a survey, global viewing figures for the match averaged 109 million; this put the UEFA Champions League final above the Super Bowl (106 million viewers in 2009) as the most-watched annual sporting event in the world. Total figures, which included viewers who watched only part of the match, put the Champions League final even further ahead of the Super Bowl, with 206 million viewers compared to 162 million.
  In the U
caption: Barcelona's Lionel Messi was voted as man of the match by UEFA.com users.
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