Xavi revealed Wayne Rooney’s comment to him during Man Utd vs Barcelona UCL final in 2011 | OneFootball

Manchester United and Barcelona go head-to-head in the Europa League knockout round play-offs on Thursday night.

It doesn’t feel that long ago that these two giants of European football were battling it out in Champions League finals.

In 2009 and 2011 United and Barça faced-off in the most prestigious fixture in European club football’s calendar.

Pep Guardiola’s extraordinary Barcelona side prevailed in both finals, securing a 2-0 win in Rome in 2009 before beating the same opponents 3-1 at Wembley two years later.

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Sir Alex Ferguson admitted after the 2011 final that his Man Utd side had never faced a better team during his long spell as manager.

Wayne Rooney got United back on level terms with a great finish in the 34th minute, cancelling out Pedro’s opener.

But goals from the unstoppable Lionel Messi and David Villa in the second half sealed victory for the Catalan club.

Barcelona, as their did to many of their opponents during Guardiola’s four years in charge, passed Man Utd into submission.

What did Wayne Rooney say to Xavi?

And it all got too much for Rooney, who told Xavi to make it stop with 10 minutes left on the clock.

In Andres Iniesta’s 2016 book, ‘The Artist: Being Iniesta’, Xavi revealed his in-game chat with United’s star forward.

“Rooney came up to me before the end of the game,” Xavi, who now manages Barça, said.

“It must have been around the eighty-minute mark, something like that.

“And he said to me: ‘That’s enough. You’ve won. You can stop playing the ball around now.’”

Rooney may have been the dictionary definition of a warrior on the pitch but even his spirit was crushed after chasing shadows for most of the second half.

Rooney wanted to join Barcelona in 2010

Speaking in 2020, Rooney admitted that he wanted to join Barcelona in 2010 after rocking Man Utd by handing in a shock transfer request.

“In my head, at the time, in that two-day period, I was ready to go and play in Spain,” Rooney told the United podcast, per the Daily Mail. “Ideally, I would have liked to have gone to Barcelona, but it was looking more likely to be Real Madrid than Barcelona. Chelsea were always there as well.

“I remember sitting down for one day and thinking "imagine playing in that Barcelona team – Messi, Xavi, Iniesta and [Sergio] Busquets’. And at that time Messi wasn’t playing the way he plays now, as a No 9 for instance. He was out wide.

“I was thinking I could have slotted in perfectly. I could have come to the ball as well and have players running in behind. I remember thinking about that.”