But Gudjohnsen, who had an exceptional game in the heart of the Chelsea midfield, believes the Norwegian official was wrong over Del Horno’s first-half dismissal and insisted that it spoiled the game.

“The sending off was a turning point to a certain extent,” said Gudjohnsen. “For me it is not even a sending off, it was a minor incident that was blown out of proportion and overshadows what was potentially a great game of football.

“I think the incident just weighs too much in a game like this. If you look at the first 20 minutes, every little nudge, push and shove was given as a foul.

“Messi was all over Arjen Robben 30 seconds before the incident. If he had just given a free-kick like he had been doing for the first 20 minutes, the incident would not have happened, and it would have been 11 versus 11.

“The red card was never a red card. After seeing it on the video, I am even more disappointed because they just clashed together. Messi jumps up and del Horno misses the ball – free-kick, maybe a yellow card.”

Meanwhile Chelsea’s England midfielder Frank Lampard insists they are not out of the tie even though they have to score twice in the Nou Camp to give themselves any hope of going through to the quarter-finals.

“We are not out of the tie, we’re going to keep our heads up and try and put it right at the Nou Camp,” said Lampard.

“We’re prepared to go there and give it a good go. We played 10 against 11 for 60 minutes in the first leg. We’ll go there and play 11 against 11 and with a bit of luck and a bit of hard work there’s no reason why we can’t get a result.”

Lampard maintains that he did not see Del Horno’s tackle on Messi that led to his red card in the 37th minute but claims the Spanish left-back is not a dirty player.

“I was quite a distance away from the sending off so I didn’t see it clearly but my first instinct was that it was a yellow card so I was disappointed to see a red,” said Lampard. “There was a lot of passion and strong tackles and the red card not only killed the game but it put us under a lot of pressure.

“Maybe it looked worse than it was. I’ve never seen Del Horno do any crazy tackles since he’s been here so I didn’t expect him to start doing so in such a big game.

“Our qualm at the time was that there was no foul given when Messi was chasing down Robben because many fouls were given for their players when we were putting a lot of pressure on them but that one wasn’t given.

“Did they influence the referee? Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t but this is Champions League football and you need good referees that understand a competitive game and the right time to give fouls and the right time not to.”

Chelsea went in front in the 58th minute when Motta turned Lampard’s free-kick into his own net and after Barca levelled, substitute Didier Drogba spurned two great chances to give the English champions the lead.

Lampard said: “I tried to put the free-kick in a dangerous area and when you get it there, you’re waiting for one of us to touch it in or one of them to touch it in and fortunately that’s what happened.

“At that stage, at 1-0 we were even thinking of going 2-0 up because on the break we looked dangerous.

“Didier had a couple of chances. The one at 1-1 when he went through was a good chance. If Didier puts that in and it’s 2-1 and you could go there with a lead.

“But it didn’t work out that way and they went down the other end and scored. It’s a cruel game at his level.”