Barça, as if the hangover had arrived after an exciting first kiss, too alcoholic, too morbid to be real, ended up letting itself be dragged into a psychological hell in which There was no greater demon than Jude Bellingham. All that Mick Jagger needed to do was take off his cap, give Ronnie Wood a pat, go down to the field, and start singing to the absent Angie in front of the open abyss of Montjuïc. “Do you remember all those nights we cried? All the dreams we had close?”
Real Madrid won the League classic and forced Barça to rush down the ravine from the mountain for the first time. And he did it because Xavi Hernández’s team did not know how to manage the disappearance of the momentum shown at dawn, ultimately allowing their rival to possess them in the worst possible way. Bellingham, capable of closing a good part of the seams shown by his team on his own, knew how to recover from Gavi’s harassment to score two goals that already embedded him in the white imagination. The second of them, already in the added time of the match and with the local fans desperate to see him open his arms in front of the stands. So imposing, so sure of being part of this new football Olympus.
The initial impetus
Gavi and Fermín, two teenagers who must have been told these days that those octogenarians of the Stones who lived in the box are legends who came out of hell alive and well, who perhaps had never heard before that ‘Start me up’ with which the afternoon began, They internalized the initial coven in their own way. They got excited. And they excited a Barcelona team that wanted to stick its tongue out at Madrid. But without putting it safely away afterwards.
To find those responsible for what happened at the beginning of a beardless classic in which the Blaugrana were superior in soul and football, there is nothing like turning to Fermín and Gavi, capable of making the center of the field their own as if the town square were theirs, a child’s paradise where you can bend your knees and dream dreams. Tchouaméni, Kroos and Bellingham ran after them without understanding what was happening, although perhaps suspecting that Football, too many times, depends on the faith that one puts in it. Gavi did his best to tear the Madrid flag from the ground, represented by a first overwhelmed Bellingham, but completely unleashed when the Blaugrana’s strength began to fail.
Xavi Hernández seemed determined to get his way. Faced with the accumulation of injured and bruised people, instead of forcing his pieces, he did what not many do: apply meritocracy, without caring about age, experience or even ancestry in the dressing room. Thus, while Lewandowski, Raphinha and Koundé, fresh from the stretcher, waited their turn on the bench, The Barça coach formed a team that was going to punish Carlo Ancelotti’s initial pragmatism for a long time. in Madrid.
Beyond the fact that Xavi lined up three centre-backs –Araujo was going to be in charge, of course, of containing an overwhelmed Vinicius–, and that Cancelo played more as a winger than as a full-back, where Barça reigned in the first half was in the throat of the field, the same place where it collapsed in the second. When the reason for a team’s existence is the ball, living depends on having it.
Gundogan
Oriol Romeu stayed on the starting bench, and Gündogan, a slow-paced builder, became Fermín and Gavi’s best ally. But this time Gündogan even went much further. Real Madrid opened its doors without any explanation, as if it had woken up terrified by an unbearable fear. Out of nowhere, after a pass from Ferran Torres that Tchouaméni displaced, Gündogan took gold. Nobody knew how to follow the German footballer. Alaba threw himself to the ground with the same conviction as someone who feeds the pigeons, and Gündogan finished off the goal by sneaking the ball between Kepa’s legs.
Barça could well have taken advantage of the tactical deficiencies shown by Ancelotti, who had condemned Vinicius and Bellingham to playing with their backs turned. While the whites were involved in a strange containment exercise, Gavi stole some crow’s feet from Kroos and allowed Fermín to face Kepa. The boy with the lowered socks, however, confirmed his romance with shooting at the posts.
João Félix also tried, although his trail in the match could be summed up in a formidable shot at Rüdiger, which he could not continue because he lacked legs against Carvajal.
Although, either because Barcelona began to pay for the effort, or because Madrid finally understood that their caution would lead to condemnation, the game changed after the break. The Blaugrana took several steps back. The whites began to shoot without opposition. Until Bellingham, who else, gave himself the prominence that was supposed to him with a distant whip to which Ter Stegen could not reciprocate.
Hell
Once the tie was established, the small details could be decisive. Gil Manzano, whom the debaters had been waiting for, had not wanted to know anything about a clear grab by Tchouaméni to Araujo, but not after a push by the same Uruguayan to Camavinga. While the solutions provided by Xavi –Lewandowski, Raphinha and Lamine Yamal– could no longer change a symphony that ended up being gloomy.
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The entry of Oriol Romeu contributed nothing. Nobody knew how to close a cross against Carvajal. Nobody paid attention to Modric’s presence in the area. And no one understood that Bellingham had to be pursued to the very gates of hell.. The Englishman put his foot down and scored the final goal. But Barça, before Madrid kicked him out of the game, had already left. And there the drama.
“Isn’t it good to be alive?” Jagger lamented in that Angie composed by Keith Richards in the throes of opiate addiction. Barça preferred to suffer rather than live. There is his punishment.