Barcelona Beats Stuttgart 4-0 To Reach Champions League Quarter Final

Lionel Messi scored two fantastic goals to send Barcelona into the last eight of the Champions League with a 5-1 aggregate victory.

Messi scored a hat-trick against Valencia on Sunday but could only manage a mere two three days later. 

The World Player of the Year picked up the ball deep inside the Stuttgart half before venturing on a trademark run which resulted in the Argentine blasting the ball into the top corner from the edge of the penalty area.

Messi's second came on the hour mark. Pedro found acres of space on the right and his pass, via a neat Dani Alves flick, found Messi who turned and shot past Jens Lehmann.

Pedro Rodriguez chipped in with a goal between Messi's two strikes. A beautiful, flowing team move resulted in the brilliant Messi finding Yaya Toure in the box who showed great vision to cut the ball back for Pedro to tap in his third goal in this season's Champions League campaign.

Bojan Krkic added a fourth after coming on as a late substitute. A delightful through ball by fellow substitute Zlatan Ibrahimovic allowed the young Spaniard to finish coolly from the edge of the box.

It was a great team performance from Barcelona, who even without the injured Xavi Hernandez managed to see off Stuttgart without too many problems.

Stuttgart, to their credit set up positively, playing both Pavel Pogrebnyak and Cacau upfront but Barcelona's one-touch attacking football was too much for the German side.

Messi was given far too much space and created early chances for Thierry Henry and Pedro.

It wasn't long before Messi opened the scoring after being allowed to run from deep.

Stuttgart's attempts at leveling the tie were thwarted as Messi and Toure combined to run the defence ragged. Pedro's goal ensured the match would not go to extra time and from then Stuttgart failed to threaten Victor Valdes' goal.

Lehmann will feel he could have done better for Messi's second but nonetheless it was a another great team move after Pedro and Alves combined on the right.

Young Spanish midfielder Sergio Busquets limped off in the second half and was replaced by Ibrahimovic and despite their lead, Barcelona continued to attack, searching for more goals, in a 4-2-4 formation.

Messi almost completed a second hat-trick in a week but his header was saved brilliantly by Jens Lehmann down low.

Messi wasted another chance to score again, dragging his chipped effort wide after gliding past two defenders.

Bojan added Barcelona's fourth late on with his first touch of the ball.

On this form, Barcelona will fear nobody in Friday's draw.