Photograph by Miguel Ruiz/FC Barcelona via Getty

A few years ago, while visiting Barcelona, a friend told me that his son, four years old at the time, had three idols: Batman, Superman, and Lionel Messi, all of whom the child had grouped together in the category of superheroes. We laughed, of course, but the kid had a point. Sportswriters ran out of superlatives years ago, so I’ll keep it simple: there is no player like Lionel Messi. No one can dominate a game quite the way he does; no one has the same combination of technique, speed, artistry, and lethal scoring prowess. At only twenty-seven years old, Messi is F.C. Barcelona’s all-time leading scorer, notching his four hundredth and four hundred and first goals this past weekend. He’s won the Ballon d’Or four times, and he led his national side, Argentina, to last year’s World Cup final. When he steps onto a soccer pitch, that No. 10 jersey might as well be a cape.

Last night, in the second leg of a quarter-final for the Champions League, Europe’s top soccer tournament, Messi’s Barça made quick work of Paris St.-Germain. P.S.G. is one of the world’s richest clubs, and the expensively assembled squad was supposed to compete for the Continent’s most coveted club trophy, but they were, on the whole, slack and unimpressive. Barça carried a 3-1 cushion from the first leg into the match (the team with more aggregate goals after two matches moves onto the semi-final), and whatever slim comeback hopes P.S.G. might have had vanished when Neymar, Barça’s star striker from Brazil, scored in the middle of the first half. The Brazilian added a second goal before half time, and the next forty-five minutes were routine: P.S.G. chasing the ball; Barcelona playing graceful, ruthless keep-away. As far as spectacles go, you might even say it was boring, such was the domination. The world’s greatest player had a quiet night: a few artful runs, a few nice touches, but that was all.

Which brings us to one of the most remarkable aspects of Messi and his team’s development: Barcelona’s superhero has found a way to share the field and blend his play with two other legitimate superstars. Last night’s goal scorer, Neymar, joined from the Brazilian club Santos two summers ago, and everyone (myself included) wondered if it would work. Though the 2013-14 campaign was a rare trophyless season for Barcelona, toward the end you could see flickers of the kind of chemistry the two were building. Then, as if that weren’t enough, last summer the club splashed seventy million euros on Luis Suárez, the immensely talented, immensely controversial Uruguayan forward, best known to the casual soccer fan as the player who can’t stop biting opponents. He was suspended for the first ten matches of the season (for sinking his teeth into an Italian defender’s shoulder at the World Cup), and it’s fair to say that the early months of his adaptation to La Liga were less than impressive. But now it’s clicking. Suárez has started scoring goals, including an impressive brace against P.S.G. in the first leg.

If I’d started to come around to the idea of Messi and Neymar playing well together, adding the volatile Suárez to the mix seemed to me like lunacy. Three players, each accustomed to being the undisputed star of their team, thrust together: it was hard to imagine things going smoothly. Messi is Messi, of course. Neymar carried his national side to the World Cup semi-finals, the rare Brazilian player who did not wilt under the pressure of performing before home crowds. He was injured for the shocking 7-1 defeat at the hands of the Germans, and without him the team looked lost. As for Suárez, he was far and away the Premier League’s best player last season, dragging a flawed team, Liverpool, within a few points of the title.

Messi’s greatest accomplishment this season might not be his impressive goal-scoring record but how he’s adapted to make room for his two new co-conspirators: he’s benefited from the bullish attacking play of Suárez and from the flair of the quick-footed Neymar, just as they have undoubtedly benefited from him. The team both is and isn’t built around him; what a nightmare it must be to play defense against those three, the way they weave and the ease with which they switch the play, find the spaces, and score.

I spoke with Messi once, years ago, and I remember one answer he gave me. I asked if he preferred to score or to set up a goal with a pass, and he shrugged.

“It’s the same,” Messi said.

P.S.G. was trounced by Barça over two legs, and Lionel Messi scored only once. For the seventh time in eight years, F.C. Barcelona is in the Champions League semi-finals.

Correction: The original piece incorrectly stated the number of times Messi has won the Ballon d'Or.