Newcastle 1-2 Barcelona: Marcus Rashford steals the show to provide Magpies with harsh reality check on Champions League return, writes IAN HERBERT - and Hansi Flick says there's MORE to come from Man United outcast

There had been talk of Marcus Rashford re-discovering the talent and belief he had put down somewhere and struggled to pick up. Talk of Barcelona manager Hansi Flick making it his project to restore him, make him take defenders on more and become as dangerous crossing with his left foot as his right.

For an hour or so on Thursday night, it was hard to locate much evidence of that. A few incisive early touches before he began drift into dead ends, halted in his tracks by Newcastle United’s Kieran Trippier or, in one brief moment of first half promise, running the ball out of play.

But the look on his face from the moment he emerged on this turf told us that he has found something in Catalonia and that the intensive Spanish lessons he is undertaking several times a week are more than mere diplomacy.

Flick had said in his press conference here on Wednesday that Rashford’s shooting in training sessions was incredible - that there was ‘much more to come’ from him – and the evidence was extraordinary when it emerged in the space of nine minutes.

The header which registered his presence was superb - delivered with immense power and accuracy from Jules Kounde’s cross – to give Barcelona their lead down and send the 27-year-old sliding across the turf, mobbed by a sea of orange shirts. But the strike which made this his night, dodging Sandro Tonali to despatch a 20-yard shot which flew in off the underside of the crossbar, was sublime.

Evidence, before our very eyes, that the players we write off so soon are perhaps not the lost souls we believe them to be. A change of country and escape from malign influences was necessary for Rashford, but while Ruben Amorim treated him with thinly veiled contempt, Flick has given him professional respect. That header made him the first English player to score for Barcelona since Lineker in 1989.

For Newcastle, there were question marks about whether defender Fabian Schar was concussed and should have left the field after been hit on the side of the head by fierce shot from Rashford. He did not anticipate Rashford’s subsequent movement for the headed goal. 

The notion of signing Rashford – ‘damaged goods’ – was not remotely a prospect, but how they could have used him on a night when this football obsessive football’s yearning for a sustained European presence was so visible and audible.

‘Back in black and white’ proclaimed a mighty banner created to mark their team’s return to Europe’s high table. A monumental magpie tifo incorporate a mock back page of Faustino Asprilla’s against Barcelona on that glorious night in 1997 when the Colombian sent this opposition packing from Tyneside.

But the creative talent of the ‘Wor Flags’ group, and the feverish maelstrom just before kick off - which will not be matched by anything in the Champions League this side of Christmas - can only take a team so far.

For 15 minutes, that cauldron was fuel for Newcastle, flying at Barcelona in a way which left them looking like they did not know what had hit them. The sight of Anthony Elanga pressing Gerard Martin hard in those early moments brought the house down – his concession of a throw-in an irrelevance. Yet the fuel and the fervour are finite when there is no Asprilla, no Alexander Isak, no Nick Woltemade, for that matter, to deliver on it.

Elanga can say without fear of contradiction today that he was the fastest man across the turf when Barcelona arrived in town but when he’d torn up the right flank and delivered low across the box, there was no one to deliver on it, in the way that Asprilla did when Keith Gillespie crossed for him, 28 years ago.

The goal opened up for Harvey Barnes when he shaped to receive the best of Elanga’s deliveries, barely 20 minutes in. The 27-year-old slid his shot at Joan Garcia. Just as he did when Sandro Tonali, operating at the access of a one-two, sent him in. 

This was the chance for this front line to prove something, with Woltemade left on the bench, but the maniacal crowd were doused with anaemic finishing. It was the onrushing Anthony Gordon who looked ready to seize the night when Elanga beat Martin and pulled a ball back for him. With the goal gaping, he shot and missed the ball completely.

Eddie Howe headed back to his hutch, head in arms. Of course, this club have advanced. The last time Raphinha, on Barcelona’s left, played in this stadium, he scored for Leeds United in the penultimate game of the wretched Steve Bruce era. 

But this stage is a measure of where Newcastle are going under Saudi ownership. Howe said before this match that wants his club to go a step further than conjuring isolated ‘magical nights.’ We await evidence that they have enough for that. They were well beaten.

Tonali was the one delivering the kind of football that can take Newcastle on. He was the anchor and the visionary from the beginning. The one who ‘saw the pictures’, as former Newcastle manager Graeme Souness used to say. A moment just beyond the interval story. 

Tonali advanced through midfield, playing with his head up and despatching the pass which Elanga did not anticipate. Elanga protested with him, not cognisant of the fact that the two of them are on a different level.

Newcastle pulled a goal back – Gordon converting substitute Jacob Murphy’s cross. But Rashford was the one walking with the wide acres with the look of a man who felt he owned the place and this stage.