Now and again one has the luck to be present in a football stadium where something very special and historic is in the air. To be at the Nou Camp on Monday night was to have the privilege of witnessing the best team in the world playing its best, football at its most sublime, surrounded by the warm glow of 98,000 cules joined together in collective ecstasy.
Barca’s 5-0 thrashing of Real Madrid was a magnificent achievement played with a style and team ethos that was a perfect symphony of the one-touch, flowing , all-for-one-and-all-for one game that Pep Guardiola has developed almost to a point of perfection.
Guardiola was right not to claim this as a personal victory. This is a team whose character has been moulded by the experience of former managers, and the example of earlier players as well as the brilliance of current stars. Guardiola himself was once a player in Johan Cruyff’s ‘dream team’ which marked new parameters in Spanish football and set it on its road to European and World Cup glory.
Such is the skill and coordination of the team that Guardiola now manages that there were times on Monday when despite the rain and the cold the Barca players passed the ball for up to two minutes, with Xavi and Iniesta pirouetting in a beautiful festival of dance .
This was a night when Messi played the length and breadth of the field, quick passes one moment, lightening penetration the other, the ball stuck to his feet, creative, selfless but ever menacing, a ‘complete’ player in every sense.
And then there was Pujol playing his rocks off, and Abidal and Alves, as versatile in defence and in attack, and Pique, Busquets, Pedro, and Villa all perfectly tuned into the collective endeavour that left Madrid chasing shadows and looking ragged. And let’s not forget Valdes who saved Real Madrid’s only serious shot at goal.
This was a night when the myth of the ‘special one’ was severely dented. Mourinho suffered the biggest and most humiliating defeat of his career, his pre-match mind-games and strategy unable to deliver any serious challenge when it came to the moment of reckoning.
I don’t know what image was more telling of Madrid’s collective impotence, its loss of honour, pride, and value. There was Mourinho, looking reduced in gesture and attitude, seemingly unable to dictate or alter events, resigned to seeing out most of the match on the bench. There was Ronaldo, unable to do anything of any significance for himself, let alone his team mates. And finally there was the terrible site of Ramos hacking Messi and then hitting out at Pujol, before getting his deserved red card.
This was a night when Barca reminded us just what a critical factor they were in ending Spain’s many years of underachievement as a national squad. Some of the comradeship of La Roja was undermined in an ugly brawl between several of its individual components.
And yet this was a game that will endure in one’s memory not for its instants of thuggery but for its pervading sense of poetry in motion that enthralled us for 90 minutes and had us dancing in the streets in celebration late into the night.
As an adopted Madrileño I have to take my hat off and salute an awesome display of football, which was taken to the level of art, it was simply sublime. Little to do with Real Madrid, no opposition could have made a single dent in the Cule armour on Monday night. It was a night I forgot that Barcelona FC is a bankrupt institution in the UVI supported by the Catalan institutions, that their fans would never have the decency to applaud a Madrid team as the Bernabeau did 2 years ago, that its presidents are corrupt, that they have used the wallet since the 1960s to dominate la Liga & European competitions, that the have won twice as many Copas Generalissimos during the Dictatorship than Real Madrid but urban myths make them out the victims. NO, I forgot all that on Monday night and like most football loving Madrileños, we actually enjoyed the game simply for its pure beauty. Thank you Rechax, Cruyff and Guardiola for keeping the spirit of Total Football alive in this cynical age dominated by money and results. Thank you Guardiola too for such an eloquant post match conference (and you too Mourinho) where you put the whole game into perspective. Visca Barça.
Jimmy, I am amazed there are no other comments from your Cule mates re one of the most memorable games of football seen in decades………. is this blog just set up for me to take a dig or (once in a blue moon) praise Barça?!
sorry jimmy for the late reply. i have been busy debating on other people’s views about the la liga being a less competitve/attractive league than the E ‘commercial’PL.
apart from that no cule anywhere in the world needs to say anything more because barca did all the talking. and no matter what the problems within the institution are the fans will always stick behind their team who are focused driven and can put the club’s issues at the side and play the beautiful game.
but all in all great game!!