It was the 89th minute and it could have been the end; 63,378 people watched, minus those who’d already departed depressed – and there were plenty of them – as he stood alone before them. Standing before him, meanwhile, was Iago Herrerín; Iago Herrerín and disaster. But there were no nerves, just annoyance, and there would be no joy, not even much sign of relief. Leo Messi took the penalty that might just have rescued Barcelona’s season, pulling them from an even darker place and keeping them alive for another week at least, as if all he really wanted was to get rid of the ball. Kick the bloody thing away. So he did: dismissively, angrily … and into the net.
And then he stood there. Messi didn’t smile, didn’t raise his fingers to the sky, another goal dedicated to his late grandmother Celia, and didn’t say anything. Team-mates ran over and embraced him but there was barely a flicker. He had just scored the winner in the last minute – although there was still time for Nabil El Zhar’s shot to fly wide at the other end – yet he didn’t feel like celebrating, didn’t feel he had anything to celebrate. He just stood, eyes lost, as if he was embarrassed or angry or both, ashamed by it all, black thoughts going round his mind. At the full-time whistle he walked off, occasionally responding to an opponent’s outstretched hand, but not stopping, like he just wanted to get out of there.
Marc-André ter Stegen eventually followed him, stopping briefly for the pitchside interview. “It’s been a very difficult week for everyone and the most important thing was to win,” he said.
The most important thing, perhaps, but not the only thing. That much had been laid bare. A win like this did little for them, emotionally. It came in the last minute, Barcelona playing their Get Out Of Jail Free card – another one. They had scored after just three minutes, Messi putting away Luis Suárez’s assist, but Unai López had equalised for Leganés to make it 1-1 with 20 minutes to go. A draw would have left Barcelona three points behind Real Madrid, having played two games more and and hurting. In the week in which they were hammered 4-0 in Paris, their Champions League campaign virtually over, their league campaign might have been virtually over as well. But then came Messi.
Actually, then came Neymar. For all the talk of Messi – “once again, Messi,” the headline in Sport read; “The saviour: Messi saved Barcelona again,” El Mundo Deportivo echoed – it was the Brazilian who really made it happen, just as he was the only player really making anything happen in Paris or trying to anyway. He ran into the area and was brought down by Martín Mantovani to win the penalty. Messi hit it hard, almost irritably, into the corner – a sensation that was reinforced by the way he reacted, or didn’t react.
Compare it with the day he scored a last-minute penalty winner against Valencia in October. There had been relief then, vindication, anger, screams; this time there was silence, a lost stare. Recognition perhaps that this was just a temporary stay of execution, a portrait of deeper problems. There’s a phrase here that refers to a bullfighter’s pride, and maybe Messi felt that on Sunday night: you don’t celebrate a victory without honour, without glory.
Before the game, the Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu had said: “It seemed as if [everything] was a debacle [with Tuesday’s loss] and it’s not.” Had they failed to beat Leganés it really would have been – and they had been mighty close to not winning. Rightly so, too: it is not even as if the penalty was the logical consequence of a late siege, still less a game-long one. “Barcelona border on the ridiculous,” Marca said; “Leganés had Barcelona on the ropes,” AS agreed. The front page of El Mundo Deportivo on Monday morning simply said: “Ufff!”, while Sport’s front page leads on: “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
But is there? Messi’s reaction suggested otherwise. Barcelona needed to win, they also needed to win well – not least to convince themselves that there’s still a chance in the Champions League. But if they can only scrape past Leganés thanks to a late penalty, how are they going to stick four past Paris Saint-Germain? If football is, as Jorge Valdano famously put it, a state of mind, Barcelona’s is depressed.
Maybe this was always likely. “We know football: we all knew that tonight would be hard, strange, [because of] our emotional state and those imperceptible things, but thankfully we sorted it out,” Andrés Iniesta said. Luis Enrique claimed that the “inevitable ghosts appeared”, insisting: “It’s difficult given where we came from. The Champions League game is a weight upon you.” Writing in AS, Santi Giménez likened it to a hangover, harder to handle with age, where “routine tasks are torture”; where you might wake up and think you’re OK – Barcelona led after three minutes – but “you need to lie down on the sofa as soon as you reach the living room”. “Barcelona,” he says, “were promised a big win but it was all they could do to reach the toilet on time.”
And all this against Leganés, playing their first ever season in primera, without a win in 11, without a goal in three, and just two points off the drop zone: a game most thought would have been little more than a short, a Talking Point. (Yeah, sorry about that). Instead it was agonisingly close for Barcelona, almost a collapse that would have felt definitive. The end was nigh, until that penalty. It may still be, even with it.
There was something about the match, the performance, the whole night, that was deeper than a single game, a reflection of that whole debate about Barça’s identity and the way they’re playing. And nothing more so than the image at the end, a picture painting a thousand dark words: so much has been said, but it’s tempting to conclude that none of it said as much, or as eloquently, as Messi did without saying a word. He scored twice but didn’t smile once. Didn’t play well, either. And nor did anyone else.
On a night when for the first time ever Barcelona started with just one Spaniard (one Catalan if you prefer, and some do), a night when they had only two players from La Masia; when some supporters chanted Luis Enrique’s name and others whistled their disapproval, a Camp Nou plebiscite opening up a divide; when André Gomes was withdrawn to whistles in a stadium; and where one banner asked: “What has happened to Barcelona? I feel ashamed”, they needed a late penalty to win. On the night when they most needed something to believe in, unity and support five days after that defeat, they didn’t get it.
On Sunday morning Sport and El Mundo Deportivo had done it again. Great minds or fools you decide, but for the umpteenth time they’d gone for the same headline: “It’s down to you … the hour has come,” they agreed. The hour, when it came, only just made it in time. It was almost 11 o’clock when Messi scored and frankly unexpected, too. Barcelona had 74% of the ball, it is true, but Samuel Umtiti to Jérémy Mathieu to Umtiti to Mathieu and back again isn’t going to worry anyone. The front three were largely absent, creating little, lacking sharpness or vision; Neymar apart, there not much sign of a rebellion. And the midfield three, changed for the 20th game in a row, were even more anonymous. They didn’t control or dominate. And here’s a stat: there isn’t a Barcelona player in the top 10 passers in the league this season and there isn’t a Barcelona midfielder in the top 25. Sergio Busquets is not in the top 80.
Here’s another stat: 11 times La Liga teams have kept clean sheets against Leganés this season, the side who had scored just 15 times. Barcelona could not make it 12. They let in one, they could have let in more. The visitors have been drawn into a battle against relegation which was always likely but which they had resisted for so long until Sporting won last week, and which now looks all the more real with Granada winning this. So Asier Garitano admitted that Leganés came to the Camp Nou seeking a performance that would “strengthen” them. That did not actually mean getting a result, he explained, yet as it turned out they almost did. They had 11 shots, only two fewer than Barcelona and as many on target, while Ter Stegen was the game’s outstanding player, making five saves.
When Leganés’s goal came, it was a mistake from Sergi Roberto but it was no fluke, no isolated moment. No, they deserved the draw, everyone knew. And as Messi stood there waiting to take it from them, he knew best of all.
Talking points
• Antoine Griezmann took the kick-off, playing the ball back to Gabi Fernández, who carried it a couple of yards forward and then hit it long. Fernando Torres nodded it on, Yannick Carrasco ran to reach it and scored. The second half was seconds old and Atlético had the lead at Sporting Gijón, whose first-half performance lay in tatters. But if you think that was quick, Kevin Gameiro was quicker. He came on as a sub, the score by then 1-1, and grabbed the second fastest La Liga hat-trick in (recorded) history, after Bebeto against Albacete in 1995, and one second quicker than David Villa against Athletic in 2006. In total, four minutes and 45 seconds passed between his first and his third.
When you consider that there are also two celebrations, a double substitution and two free-kicks between the first and the third crossing the line, it’s even more impressive. TV were still showing the first as the second started to happen, thanks to more comedy defending from Jorge Meré and Fernando Amorebieta, making an entirely accurate time calculation difficult. But as a rough estimate: from crossing the line to start the hat-trick to crossing the line to finish it, the ball was only actually in play for around 81 seconds. “I dedicate it to my grandmother who passed away this week,” Gameiro said afterwards. His team-mates, meanwhile, dedicated him the ball. “The Flash,” Filipe Luis called him.
• Speaking of fast. Gareth Bale is back. He had been away for 88 days but took just 13 minutes to score – despite admitting that he wasn’t actually planning on sprinting, just easing his way through the game. His strike was the 100th Real Madrid goal scored by a British footballer in the Spanish league, along with David Beckham, Michael Owen and Laurie Cunningham, all on 13, and Steve McManaman, who got eight. It finished 2-0 and it was not just about Bale. Isco provided two assists and Ronaldo not only produced a brilliantly bamboozling bit of skill but, for the second game in a row, a superb performance.
• Sevilla: they’re still there, you know. It wasn’t their best performance – in fact, Jorge Sampaoli admitted that Eibar deserved more – but they won again at the weekend thanks largely to the hugely impressive Stefan Jovetic. Another superb signing.
• “Welcome to Los Cármenes, here’s the line-up for tonight’s game. For Granada Club de Fútbol: in goal, wearing No13, Memo Ochoa, Mexico. No22, Foulquier, France; No29 Hongla, Cameroon; No25 Ingason, Iceland; No3 Gastón Silva, Uruguay; No23 Héctor, Spain; No5 Uche, Nigeria; No18 Andreas Pereira, Brasil; No16 Carcela, Morocco; No8 Wakaso, Ghana; and wearing No7 Adrián Ramos, Colombia.”
For the first time in La Liga history, a team lined up with 11 players from 11 different countries when Granada played Betis on Friday. Even with the changes, the balance was almost maintained: a Spaniard, Moroccan and a Ghanaian came off, two Spaniards (Catalans) and a Greek went on. This, after all, is the squad that has 17 different nationalities in it, but even they had never done this before. They might do it again after they hammered Betis 4-1. “We’ve got hope back,” said coach Lucas Alcaraz, the most Granada man there is: former player, three-times manager, a gate at the stadium with his name on. As for Betis, their manager Víctor took the players over to the corner to apologise to the fans, standing there with their heads bowed, post-game.
• “This is a hard time,” Deportivo coach Gaizka Garitano said. His team are another that could well be dragged into the relegation fight – if they’re even his team for much longer.
• Knocked out the cup, defeated 3-2 with two late goals at the Calderón, beaten in the Europa League all in the space of eight days, Celta desperately needed a win. They got it against Osasuna, Iago Aspas dinking in the best of the three goals. As for Villarreal, they needed a result too, after their 4-0 hammering by Roma in midweek. Surprisingly, they got it in San Sebastian, with Samu Castillejo’s 94th-minute winner. Real Sociedad had16 shots, none of them on target.
• “I’ve got an English friend who says that tomorrow I’ll be a fucking legend,” so said Athletic Bilbao manager Ernesto Valverde on the eve of his team’s trip to Valencia, a game that was set to take him beyond Javier Clemente as the coach with the most games at the club. To which the only legitimate response was surely: Ernesto, you already are. Not that it helped much: with Inaki Williams and Aritz Aduriz left out (both came on later although Aduriz had to go off again), Athletic could not end their five-month run without an away win. Valencia, for whom Fabián Orellana looks like a superb signing, won 2-0. “It’s still not a matter of life and death,” Voro had said before the game; after it he said, “this is the path we have to follow to get out of there.” He has changed things, that’s for sure. “Voro is their best asset,” Valverde said afterwards. “He’s just saying that because he’s a mate of mine,” Voro replied.
• The Spanish government has passed a law that brings anti-doping practice in line with the rest of the world … two years later. And, yes, that does mean what you think it means – yet little has been said. Tests this season were running at 0.003%, according to Marca.
• Finally, investigating judges have decided that there is sufficient evidence to go ahead with the case against 18 of the 19 people originally investigated in relation to match fixing by Osasuna between 2012 and 2014, including three then-Betis players Jordi Figueras, Antonio Amaya and Xavi Torres, and the former Osasuna president Miguel Archanco and his board. Betis’s players are accused of having accepted €650,000 in cash to beat Valladolid on the penultimate week and then to lose to Osasuna on the final week of the 2013-14 season.
Results: Barcelona 2–1 Leganés, Celta Vigo 3–0 Osasuna, Deportivo La Coruña 0–1 Alavés, Granada 4–1 Real Betis, Real Madrid 2–0 Espanyol, Real Sociedad 0-1 Villarreal, Sevilla 2–0 Eibar, Sporting Gijón 1-4 Atlético Madrid, Valencia 2–0 Athletic.
Monday: Málaga v Las Palmas.
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