Messi, Barcelona beat valiant Arsenal in 2-0 Champions League first-leg win

The ball, as they like to say in the Netherlands, is round. Soccer is a low-scoring sport, and low-scoring sports are unpredictable.

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But playing soccer with that round ball against Barcelona can sometimes feel like taking on a preordained destiny. Over the last decade, it has felt like the ball runs a little faster for the Catalans. That it travels truer through the air. That it takes better bounces. On many a day, it even feels like the field slopes downwards towards whatever goal Barca happens to be attacking in that half, and then tilts on its axis at halftime.

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Just as the tax man always wins in the end, and death will only be cheated for so long, the ball eventually goes into the goal Barcelona is playing to. The house always wins. Barcelona is the house.

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The house won 2-0 in the first leg of Barca's and Arsenal's UEFA Champions League round of 16 matchup on Tuesday, even though the Londoners were the home team. Lionel Messi scored both away goals, all but assuring Barcelona's place in the quarterfinals for the ninth year in a row.

Arsenal made an audacious start, realizing full well that in spite of being one of the biggest clubs in the world, with one of the finest assemblies of talent, the Gunners were the prohibitive underdogs. That they had even gotten this far – reaching the knockout stages for an astonishing 16th year in a row – was something of a miracle. After a wretched 1-3 start to their continental campaign, they had needed two tricky wins and gotten them both with ease, advancing by a hair. And their domestic title challenge is withering, in spite of a cathartic injury-time win over leaders Leicester City. Arsenal has sagged to third place in the midst of yet another injury rash and predictably ill-timed swoon in form.

Then there's the unsettling fact that Arsenal had been knocked out in this same round of 16 in each of the last five seasons, forever running into the tournament's best or hottest team. Which is to say that little was expected of the Gunners, no matter how ferociously their fans cheered them on. Barca, after all, won the treble last year – the Champions League, La Liga and the Copa del Rey – and is on target to do the same this year, looking even stronger and having already claimed the Club World Cup.

So, perhaps feeling as if it was playing with house money, the home team counterattacked in numbers and with a conviction Barca is seldom confronted with these days, making use of its speed. This produced chances for Aaron Ramsey and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain within 22 minutes. But neither tested goalkeeper Marc-Andre Ter Stegen.

Barca, meanwhile, struggled in the first half to spend much time in the final third, where it usually takes residence for most of the game. When the Catalans did get there, they attempted aerial crosses, playing into the lone edge Arsenal had over its visitors – superior heading. The Gunners played rabid defense, clustering around the man on the ball and harassing Sergio Busquets, at whose feet most all attacks begin from deep in midfield.

Barcelona had some three-quarters of possession in the first half but failed to put an attempt on target. Suarez had two good looks late on before halftime but couldn't score with either.

Just after the break, Arsenal goalkeeper Petr Cech made a strong save on Neymar's close-range effort. But then Arsenal began threatening, most notably with an Olivier Giroud header on the hour, which prompted an impressive save from goalkeeper Marc-Andre Ter Stegen.

It seemed for much of the night like neither team would demean itself to something so vulgar and gauche as scoring a goal, and that was just fine. For 71 minutes, the forward line of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez, which had already produced 91 goals this season going into the game, was stumped by the second-stingiest defense in the Premier League.

But Arsenal began pushing forward again, opening up the game. And then, within seconds, Barca got the ball across the field on a counter. Neymar was sprung by Suarez and teed up Messi, who made no mistake when faced with only goalkeeper Petr Cech, whom he faked off his feet by deadening the ball on a dime before shooting.

Suarez soon hit the post and Ter Stegen denied Ramsey. And that's when, in the 83rd minute, Per Mertesacker failed to clear the ball in his own box, whereupon Mathieu Flamini, who had only just come on, scythed Messi down. He converted his own penalty.

Arsenal had resisted valiantly. It had raged against the natural order of things for more than an hour. It had even looked like it might pull off another Champions League miracle this season and get itself to the second leg of this contest with a hope of make it through.

But a round ball soared twice into a goal. And so it might as well have been oblong to the team not named Barcelona.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.