SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Wayne Rooney believes the Barcelona team that won the Treble last season is as good as any the Camp Nou club has had over the last decade.
Manchester United face the Spanish and European champions in a friendly in Santa Clara on Saturday and Rooney told ESPN FC that Barcelona's success last season took them to a new level.
"Barcelona are a fantastic team and, after Real Madrid winning the Champions League [in 2014], they wouldn't have liked that and they've come out again and been incredible really, probably as good as they have been over the last 10 years, I believe," the United captain said.
Under Pep Guardiola's management, Barcelona were known for dominating possession and pressing opponents high up the pitch. Rooney, though, sees a contrast from that style in the current side, which is coached by Luis Enrique.
"It's a different way of playing -- they're defending a little bit deeper and not going and closing down teams the way they did and they're hurting teams on the counter-attack," he said.
"You can see there's a change in the way they play but, with the players they have got, obviously [Lionel] Messi, Neymar and [Luis] Suarez, they are a massive threat to anyone."
While Barcelona were winning the Champions League last season, Rooney and his teammates were forced to watch after Manchester United failed to qualify for the competition and the striker took the chance to observe with an analytical eye.
"I think as a player, and hopefully one day going into coaching, then you're always trying to pick up things, what teams are doing and, especially as you get a little bit older, you are trying to see how different teams are playing the game and how you feel you could counteract that. It's a different way of watching football and learning from it," he added.
Rooney was in the United team beaten by Barcelona in the 2009 and 2011 Champions League finals and admits that, while both hurt, the venue of the latter game [Wembley stadium in London] made that defeat even harder to take.
"You're so close to winning it and to lose twice to Barcelona is hard to take really," he said. "I think you sometimes have to hold your hands up and say they were the better team -- the best team in Europe -- and it was going to be difficult for us to win the game. I'd say probably the game at Wembley, being there, it would have been nice to have won the Champions League there."
Saturday's friendly marks the third time the two sides have met in the U.S. in the last 12 years, following previous encounters in 2003 and 2011, both of which the Premier League side won.
So far in preseason United have won each of their two games in the United States -- 1-0 vs. Club America and 3-1 vs. San Jose -- while Barcelona, despite being without the likes of Messi and Neymar, got their American tour off to a winning start on Tuesday with a 2-1 victory vs. L.A. Galaxy.