While their style of play does have a strong defensive element to it by keeping the ball so much, it is nice to watch as well and very technical.

They do have Busquets and Alves who are pretty appalling for diving but the rest are no worse than any one else and Messi in particular stays on his feet far more than any other player I've seen receiving the type of treatment he does. They did look bad against Real in the CL first leg... but then they got almost no protection in the two previous matches against Real who a decent ref would have issued several reds to in each game (and in fact the same in the two CL games).... Gods I despise Mourinho, despite his success as a coach he's just a nasty little turd.