Barcelona completed the second leg of a possible treble by winning the Copa del Rey on Saturday, led by an unstoppable Lionel Messi, who opened and closed Barcelona’s scoring in a 3-1 win over Athletic Bilbao.

Barcelona will try to complete an exceptional debut season for its coach, Luis Enrique, with a victory over Juventus in the final of the Champions League next weekend in Berlin. Earlier this month, Barcelona won the Spanish league title, finishing ahead of its archrival, Real Madrid.

After the Cup victory, Luis Enrique said his team had been outstanding, taking control from the start of the final.

“It’s a shame for Athletic to face a Barça of this level,” he said. “I’m sure our attitude for the final in Berlin will be the same — let’s see if we are then capable of overcoming the opponent.”
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As has happened so often in recent years, it took a moment of pure brilliance by Messi to unlock the defense. From what looked like an unpromising starting position, on the right flank and far from the goal, Messi wove past four defenders before firing a powerful low shot past Bilbao’s goalkeeper, Iago Herrerín.

Barcelona’s chances to increase its lead came thick and fast, with Messi almost inevitably involved. Two minutes after he scored, Messi delivered a pinpoint cross to Luis Suárez, who was unmarked in front of goal, but with a poor first touch, the golden opportunity went to waste.

Any expectations that Barcelona might rest some of its star players before the Champions League final evaporated when Suárez was included in the lineup, even though he had recently sustained a minor injury.

Suárez did not add his name to the score sheet on Saturday, but he was instrumental in Barcelona’s second goal, sliding the ball across the goal mouth to gift Neymar the chance to score a tap-in goal in the 36th minute.

By midway through the second half, Barcelona was so much in control that its midfielders were playing almost at a walking pace. But whenever the team moved up a gear, the result was yet another scoring opportunity. In the 73rd minute, Messi completed his outstanding display by scoring another goal, this time pouncing on a cross from Dani Alves.

Six minutes later, Bilbao scored a consolation goal, thanks to a clever back-header from Iñaki Williams, a promising forward who this season became the first black player to score for Bilbao, a club that proudly uses players of Basque descent.

About 70,000 Bilbao fans traveled to Barcelona, some 50,000 of whom filled half the stadium with the red and white colors of their club.

Barcelona started the match as the firm favorite, playing in its own stadium, Camp Nou, and having lost only once in its last 24 matches against Bilbao. In fact, Bilbao had won its last Copa del Rey trophy in 1984 against a Barcelona team that at the time featured another exceptionally skillful Argentine, Diego Maradona.

But while that Bilbao team managed to frustrate Maradona, holding back Messi proved impossible.

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Barcelona’s triumphant season has been spearheaded by its three lethal forwards — Messi, Neymar and Suárez. On Saturday, they set a combined record in a Spanish season — 120 goals so far, ahead of the 118 scored in 2012 by Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín. Messi has contributed almost half of the Barcelona group’s total — 57, including Saturday’s two.

“Messi does what he does because he is the best player in the world,” Luis Enrique said.

The match was particularly emotional for Xavi, who came on as a substitute early in the second half and took over the captain’s armband from Andrés Iniesta while Barcelona’s fans chanted Xavi’s name.

Xavi was playing in Camp Nou for the last time, ahead of a move to Qatar. By receiving the Cup, alongside Iniesta, from King Felipe VI, Xavi became the Spanish player with the most club silverware — 24 trophies.

In the dying minutes, the match briefly turned ugly.

Neymar tried to flick the ball over his head to get past Bilbao’s defenders, an acrobatic move that was perceived as an act of arrogance and provocation by Bilbao’s players, who then scuffled with him. Andoni Iraola, a veteran Bilbao defender, said afterward that Neymar should follow the examples of some of his own teammates and “not behave like this.”

After the game, Luis Enrique sided with Bilbao’s players rather than with Neymar, suggesting that such a gratuitous display of skills might be “normal” in Neymar’s native Brazil but was considered bad sportsmanship in Spain.

“If I was a player of Athletic, I would have responded the same or worse,” Luis Enrique said.

While the game ended euphorically for Barcelona’s fans and players, it started on a controversial note. Spain’s politics and separatist tensions eclipsed any sporting rivalry as fans from both teams booed Spain’s national anthem in front of the Spanish monarch. At a time when Catalonia’s regional government has been pushing to break away from the rest of Spain, the Spanish soccer authorities had warned before the game that the clubs would be punished if fans did not respect the anthem — to no avail.

Source NYtimes