Sunday morning and military machines rolled down the Castellana, armoured vehicles on the move. Snipers stood on roofs and helicopters circled. Something big was happening. “We’ll know how it feels,” Marca said, which they wouldn’t of course, but like everyone else they hoped to find out. And, like everyone else, they were trying. Politicians packed the place, more even than usual, and people arrived from everywhere, papers dedicating dozens of pages. Florentino Pérez left Real Madrid’s match at Huesca early to be there and the best player in the world was due as soon as he’d finished, his club mates too. The third best was there. And so was the fifth.
Leo Messi boarded a plane bound for the Bernabéu, where he’s scored more than any visitor, but he wasn’t playing this time. This was the weekend when Javi Calleja was sacked as Villarreal manager and a last-minute equaliser for Valencia couldn’t stop Mestalla whipping out white hankies; when Betis defender Sidnei went all Maradona, or so they said, and Eibar and Levante went wild; when Cornellá hosted the Catalan derby and Butarque the “southern derby”, Leganés’s mascot presiding over an on-pitch proposal at half-time against Getafe because nothing says romance like a six-foot cucumber. Yet much of that didn’t warrant a word because this was also the weekend when Madrid hosted the derby; one they tried to make their own, although it’s not.
The Copa Libertadores came to Spain: River-Boca at the Santiago Bernabéu, never quite the same but still quite something. And Messi, like almost everyone else, didn’t want to miss it. Yet if there was anything that shouldn’t be missed – this weekend and pretty much every other weekend too – it is Messi. One day, not so far away now, it won’t be a choice to make, and then it will be too late, Saturday underlining how much of a void he may leave. The Catalan derby had been billed as the most even in memory, Espanyol chasing a Champions League place, but in front of 24,037 at Cornellá-Prat, the stadium half-empty, Barcelona defeated Espanyol 4-0, Messi making a myth of equality.
Ousmane Dembélé scored a lovely goal, Luis Suárez too, but this was about him – and this weekend of all weekends, as if any excuse was needed, which perhaps it is and perhaps that’s the problem. This weekend Messi did something unusual: he did something he hasn’t done before, exceeding his own expectations.
On 15 minutes, he ran through, got fouled, got up and began his ritual. He put the ball on the floor, twisting it, almost screwing it into the turf, and stepped back. On the touchline, Barcelona’s manager watched. “I was thinking: Diego López dives well; he’s going to have to hit it perfectly,” Ernesto Valverde said, and that’s what he did, bending it high and hard, from left to right, always just beyond López’s reach, almost taunting him as it went, and into the top corner. Then, an hour in, he did it again, only into the other corner. “Sometimes you take a load of free-kicks and don’t score,” Messi said after. Yeah, and sometimes you do.
Eleven Sports (@ElevenSports_UK)
| 😍 |
Lionel Messi’s free kick gets better with every watch – so here it is from all available angles 🤩
Watch the second-half live || https://t.co/fPSma92loW pic.twitter.com/CAM65VbvKY
Eleven Sports (@ElevenSports_UK)
| GOAL! |
He’s done it again! 🤯
Lionel Messi has scored another free-kick, he is not human. 👽 pic.twitter.com/JZxyI6CCXJ
This was the first time he’d scored two free-kicks in a game; by the end, there was almost a hint of disappointment he didn’t score a hat-trick of them. “There’s not much I can say, not much I can add to what everyone has seen. Against a free-kick taker like him, there’s not much you can do, although you have to try something: sneak forward, stand on your toes, take the wall away maybe,” Rubí said. Messi has scored 10 free-kicks in 2018, while over the last four years, he’s scored more than any team in Europe’s five biggest leagues, ahead of Juventus, Bayern, Madrid and PSG.
Like that’s everything anyway, even if some players have made a career of that. “If you don’t foul him, he gets through to the ‘kitchen’,” Rubí admitted. The kitchen, you see, is right at the back at the house, or at least it’s supposed to be. “We tried to cut off his path and if we fouled him it’s because we had to,” Rubí added. On Saturday Messi scored two, sure, but he also created five chances. You could take his first half alone, take each of the things he did, spread them out, one per game, and distribute them to just about any other footballer and you’ve got a candidacy for player of the month, two months running. It is not just what he does, it’s how much he does: the relentlessness, the repetitiveness, how routine it becomes.
Even for Messi, this was superb. “His Magnum opus,” El Mundo called it. He was hyperactive – if there is a moment that stands out, it might even be when he chased back to win the ball, which is kind of daft really, but makes sense in a man-bites-dog sort of way. Perhaps there was some extra motivation in the week he finished fifth in the Ballon d’Or and Pelé bizarrely insisted he is one-footed, bad in the air, and only has one skill. Or perhaps it is everything that goes around him that makes it feel that way, everything that is said. Not so much what Pelé said as the very fact he said it. Perhaps it is the game – a derby – and the timing, the context, as much as the performance. And, yes, that makes these pages guilty too. It would be a nonsense to claim that he gets ignored but sometimes, maybe an excuse is needed for Messi to be the story.
This week, there was one, that’s for sure. It’s just a pity that the excuse is often translated as indignation, some slightly strange, occasionally tiresome rage, an often-unnecessary, sometimes unpleasant anger. As if Luka Modric, or Cristiano Ronaldo or Antoine Griezmann or Kylian Mbappé are rubbish, unworthy of respect or celebration; as if three European Cups or a World Cup mean nothing. As if awards actually matter that much, anyway – if there was a recurring theme on Saturday, it was Messi’s place in the Ballon d’Or. Everywhere it seemed people recalled that he’d finished fifth – a single word that seemed to come in italics and with its own built-in ?!.
Democracy was derided and France Football stood accused. A grand conspiracy at worst; at best, journalists who know nothing. Even though players and managers returned the same verdict. If there is something in the surprise – on ESPN, presenter Dan Thomas asked a simple, incisive question: “If this had been Messi’s first season …?” – if Messi pays for having normalised the abnormal, held to different standards; if there is some underlying if not entirely justified desire for something new among voters, there is also a difference between player of the year award and best player. And the stage on which awards are decided are often different ones.
Cornellá may not condition the Ballon d’Or, but the Ballon d’Or did appear to condition Cornellá; it provided the context, at least. The response, too. “O Rei Messi,” cheered the cover of El Mundo Deportivo, its headline pointing Pelé’s way; “the Ballon d’Or blushes”, claimed the front of Sport: it, like Barcelona’s kit, had gone pink with embarrassment. “The Ballon d’Or is very strange, but for us he’s the number one,” Gerard Piqué said. “The Ballon d’Or is a lie,” Jordi Alba added. But on the weekend when Argentina’s best game eclipsed all else and so did Argentina’s best player, Valverde put it best: “It’s bloody brilliant that Messi’s here with us.”
Talking points
• “We didn’t just park our arses in our own area, and the players did everything I asked of them. Sometimes I tell them that we have to be calmer when we’re in the lead, but that’s not the way I am and they tend to follow the way their manager is.” That’s what José Luis Mendilibar said and that’s the way we like him. This week above all, when Eibar and Levante went from 1-0 to 1-2 and from 4-2 to 4-4, a 92nd-minute goal providing the finish to a morning of madness.
• “We did almost nothing in the second half,” Thibaut Courtois said and he wasn’t wrong. Apart from about himself. Gareth Bale’s first league goal for 99 days was just about all Madrid did as they somehow managed a victory at bottom-of-the-table Huesca. “Vulgar,” AS called them.
• Even a last-minute equaliser didn’t stop the hankies* at Mestalla, as Valencia did what Valencia almost always do: drew. “I’m the man responsible, if not the only one to blame,” Marcelino said. “I’ll keep working as long as the club thinks I should still be here.” [*most of which are not actually hankies]
• Two late goals from Carlos Bacca could not salvage anything for Villarreal against Celta and could not save their manager either. Javi Calleja has been sacked – and not, in truth, before time. Iago Aspas is very, very good, by the way – but then you knew that already.
• Athletic Bilbao have changed their manager mid-season for the first time in a decade, but they won’t be changing their philosophy. Gaizka Garitano takes charge for the first time in the league on Monday. They haven’t won since the opening day.
Quick guide
La Liga results
Real Betis 2-0 Rayo Vallecano, Real Sociedad 1-2 Valladolid, Huesca 0-1 Real Madrid, Eibar 4-4 Levante, Espanyol 0-4 Barcelona, Villarreal 2-3 Celta Vigo, Valencia 1-1 Sevilla, Atlético Madrid 3-0 Alavés, Leganés 1-1 Getafe