Round of 16 Fan Preview: FC Barcelona

Well, THIS is weird.

It wasn’t that long ago that gloom and misery stalked the halls of Culerville after the second-best player in the game scuttled to Paris, in search of more sun than shadow.

His ostensible replacement broke while doing, of all things, a backheel, and needed surgery.

A dour man nicknamed The Ant was tasked with building something, and his team won. And went to Champions League and won some more. Now, remarkably, Barça is considered one of the Champions League favorites. To cite the Grateful Dead, it's been a long, strange trip.