The 19-year-old produced a superbly poised performance in Arsenal's 2-1 victory in an exhilarating first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie that came on the back of his first start for England the previous week.
"It is by far the biggest night of my Arsenal career so far. They have players like Xavi, Iniesta, [Lionel] Messi - I have been watching them for years now. I watched them in the World Cup and many of them [the Barcelona team] are World Cup winners," said Wilshere, who had the shirts of Xavi and Iniesta with him in his bag. "It's been a crazy couple of weeks, probably the best couple of weeks of my life."
"But there is still a job to do. We want to see it through at the Nou Camp. We have to get a goal early and then let them come at us again."
Despite being praised by Arsène Wenger as "outstanding" Wilshere was modest regarding the suggestion that he was comfortable performing against such garlanded opponents. "It's easy to play with the players we have," he said. "We play similar to Barcelona and that's the kind of football I like to play. It's easy to fit into a team like Arsenal. He also revealed that none of the Barcelona players wanted to talk after the match. "No, they were a bit upset. They were 1-0 up and they lost, so they were upset."
Last year in the quarter-finals Arsenal were trounced 4-1 in Spain after they had held Barcelona 2-2 but they will take confidence from beating for the first time the team considered by many to be the best in the world.
"Last year helped us," Wilshere said. "We learned a lot. We knew we had to push them harder. Last year they started off well in the first half and we came back into it. This time we did and we got the win. The defence was great. Playing against Messi and [David] Villa is a big ask but they were great. Keeping patient was vital. We know they are very good and can keep the ball and for the first 20 minutes of the first half we were chasing them. We knew we had to keep our shape and hit them on the counterattack and push up hard in the second half."
"We know there's character in this team. We showed that against Everton [winning 2-1 a fortnight ago when also 1-0 behind at half-time]. We are still in all four competitions and that takes some character."
Wilshere and his colleagues responded to Wenger's half-time team talk. "We created four chances in the first half so we weren't out of it. He said the chances would come and we had to just keep plugging away. That's what we did. It was hard."
"In the first half they showed how good they are on the ball. It was hard to get in their faces but in the second half we pushed them and got two good goals. Now we have to go to the Nou Camp and show our character. And we have to go at them as well."
Johan Djourou believes Arsenal may now be on the verge of greatness. "We showed a lot of character and to come back from behind and win was incredible," the central defender said. "I think our team has a lot of potential to achieve greatness at the end of the season."
Nicklas Bendtner, whose introduction as substitute served as a further notice of their attacking intentions, was keen to highlight his side's ability to cope with pressure. "We could have given up but if you look at the one thing that we've never done all through the whole season is to give up," the striker said.
"We've kept going until the last second where we had some difficult moments against Ipswich [Town in the Carling Cup semi-final] and Leeds [United] where it came down to a penalty at the end [to force a replay in the FA Cup]. That's the way the team is now. We never give up and it seems to give us results."
"It was a great result. The way we earned the result was through patience, belief and staying calm because there were periods in the first half where, against big teams, you always need a little bit of luck."
"To be honest, as I was warming up, I felt they were a bit tired. We felt there was a chance to get at them in the last few minutes."
"It's difficult to say what's different this time to a year ago. But we've improved and we've grown. We've grown as a team and grown as people and players and that came out."
"It was tremendous, a great feeling. Everyone is so happy. It's a big, big result against probably the best team in the world and it was a fantastic night."
Source: Jamie Jackson, The Guardian on 17 Feb 11
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