It started against Atletico Madrid and it ended against Atletico Madrid, the circle completed at the Calderon. Three hundred and 64 days after Atletico went to Barcelona and won the league, Barcelona went to Atletico and won it back again, Leo Messi’s superb goal sufficient to take the title.
But maybe May 17 was not the date, after all; maybe January 11 was. The night the crisis was contained, a collective catharsis that became the first day of the rest of their season. There was trouble then; there may be a treble now. Barcelona have won the league and two of their three remaining games are finals: against Athletic Bilbao in the Copa del Rey and Juventus in the European Cup.
The night of Sunday, January 11 was at the end of a week that had begun with defeat at Anoeta, where Messi sat on the bench. The following day, he had missed the only training session of the year open to fans due to “gastroenteritis” just as, with unfortunate timing, an interview with Xavi Hernandez was published in which he noted that “gastroenteritis” is the classic excuse given when something else is wrong. That same afternoon Andoni Zubizarreta, the sporting director, was sacked. Carles Puyol walked hours later. And most thought Luis Enrique would follow. One poll showed that 68% of fans wanted him the coach to do so.
His relationship with Messi under scrutiny, Luis Enrique admitted that his position had been weakened with Zubizarreta’s departure and he has taken every opportunity to praise his absent friend since. Jeremy Mathieu would later reveal that there had indeed been a clash between Messi and the coach on the training pitch. And although they were still ducking the issue then, although Luis Enrique avoided questions about ultimatums and claimed not to read the papers on doctors’ advice, he knew the board had begun sounding out replacements. Pretty soon, even they might be replaced: in that same week, presidential elections were called. “To reduce the tension,” Josep Maria Bartomeu said.
That might have helped; winning would have helped more. “Victories are the only things that can calm this wave,” Luis Enrique said. That night, Barcelona faced Atletico, league champions and a team they had not beaten in six matches last season. Lose and they might lose everything. But they did not lose: they beat Atletico on the pitch and everyone else off it. The match finished 3-1; in one night they had scored as many against Diego Simeone’s side as in the whole of the previous season. Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez got them, the first time the trio had all scored in the same game, but not the last. And after the match, Messi appeared again. “Stop throwing shit,” he said.
Aggressive There was something different about Barcelona: aggressive, driven, hyperactive, their best performance of the season. Maybe they had won thanks to the crisis, not because of it. Confronted by their own collapse, handed an external enemy against whom they could cohere, a point to prove, a last chance perhaps, they had pulled back from the abyss. The crisis management had been effective; the question was whether it would be lasting. Luis Enrique was asked afterwards if he thought the crisis had gone. “No,” he said, “next time we lose it will be back.”
It wasn’t back because they did not lose, not often. “Everything changed,” Messi later admitted. Players may have still had their doubts, they may not have always appreciated the work done by their manager, but things were falling into place and they were certainly fitter than ever before.
Compromises were made, differences were diminished, the relationship reconstructed. With victory came union, a shared purpose. “We believed at difficult moments,” Javier Mascherano said on Sunday. “We overcame adversity. We laughed when we had to laugh and suffered when we had to suffer.”
Beating Atletico then was the start; beating them now was the end. Barcelona won six in a row, lost once, won six in a row again, then drew one, then won six in a row again. They went an entire vuelta, playing every team in the league, winning 17, drawing one and losing one.
Then it came to Atletico again, and they won at the Calderon to clinch the title: 52 of 57 points. And that was just the league; they also reached the Copa del Rey final, beating Atletico twice more en route — from no wins in six last season to four wins in four this. And they reached the Champions League final in Berlin, winning in Manchester and Paris and beating Bayern, a game of powerful symbolism.
Since beating Atletico in January, Barcelona have won 29 and lost only two in 32.
Even as they were winning, there were debates about the style, about whether they were really that good. But slowly they slipped away. Beating Madrid helped; the way they won in Manchester and Paris helped even more. By the time Pep Guardiola described them as the best counterattacking team in the world, it did not sound like such a dirty word because they also counterattacked, they did not only counterattack. “Our games don’t look like handball any more,” Gerard Pique said.
There is a photograph from that Atletico game that will probably come to define this season: Messi, Suarez and Neymar running off celebrating together, an arm around each other’s shoulders. On Sunday night, Suarez was forced to sit out with a calf injury but when the final whistle went he ran on like the rest of them, wearing his shirt, piling into the celebratory circle. Another picture was taken: Messi, Neymar and Suarez again, celebrating the title, secured with their 115th goal this season.
“I have never seen a trio like it,” Pique said this week. It seemed obvious now but at that point back in January, no one else had really seen it yet.
Suarez had arrived late, not making his debut until week nine. He has 16 league goals now; his goal against Atletico that night in January was only his second. It took a while. Suarez admitted that Messi had encouraged his shift of position back into the middle. The three men, who genuinely get on well, complement each other perfectly. Suarez has been exactly what they needed, scoring the winner in the clásico which set up this title challenge and embodying the shift in style. Neymar has over 20 goals more than last season. As for Messi, well, he’s Messi. 54 goals, 30 assists and that surreal sensation that however good the stats are they’re still not good enough.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015
