Isn’t life a series of revenges? Isn’t this about getting up and smiling with a child’s face at those who saw you lost?
João Félix levitated. He climbed onto the fence. He turned his back on the field. He looked at the stands, with more cement and plastic than people. And also to the horizon. That was his way of closing a painful past and recreating himself in a present where he does not feel misunderstood. Because the Portuguese has found in Barça a place to expand a football that is too rebellious for the shackles of Simeone and too daring for a convert like Griezmann. A space to make soccer and vital revenge a way of life.
When João Félix rose over the Montjuïc mountain, with his arms wide open, he had just executed an Atlético team where the boy hopes never to return. After Barça showed the red and whites the good taste of a choral transition, with Pedri, Koundé and Raphinha as fundamental pieces in an action born at the feet of Iñaki Peña, João Félix went in search of paradise. Nahuel Molina became tiny before the Portuguese advance. And Barça’s number 14, with the confidence of someone who has buried complexes, but also fears, saved Oblak’s departure with a parabolic caress.
Barça lucidity
That 1-0 was the highlight of that Barça that, with Xavi Hernández at the helm, had rarely shown so much lucidity in the game. He pressed with both order and conviction and controlled himself with the ball, not with his legs. He even showed himself brave by plotting individual duels in the sun with his rivals. And that Atlético that arrived at Montjuïc after weeks of propaganda for an alleged change of record, lived locked up in front of Oblak’s area waiting for no one knows what.
Xavi had a clear starting point. Also Joan Laporta, who after being photographed in Palamós with the presumed heir to the bench, Rafa Márquez, takes advantage of any opportunity to organize advertorials in the first team’s dressing room. Some days with a gentleman’s jacket, and others with a plain shearling jacket. And Xavi, aware of how necessary the caresses of someone who raises and lowers his thumb are for the environment, sought safety. That is, more or less than the same starting eleven that helped them knock down Porto in the Champions League. He just had to change a couple of things. He had to delete Iñigo Martínez, with discomfort, and recover Christensen. Although the decisive readjustment had to do with Koundé, who moved to the right side while Araujo returned to the center of the defense.
Koundé’s alliances
And Koundé, allied with Raphinha and Pedri in the triangle of his zone, got used to being the starting point. Rodrigo Riquelme did not have a good time, overwhelmed until he was substituted at half-time along with the other suffering winger, Nahuel Molina, and Giménez, threatened with a card.
Simeone had no choice but to turn the situation around in all his lines with the entry of another central defender, Azpilicueta, another winger, Lino, and another forward, Correa. Then Saúl and the former Barça player Memphis would also appear. Simeone, with 25 minutes remaining, had already made all the changes.
And Barça, which He only had to regret that Lewandowski did not take advantage of any of the five chances that his teammates gave him – there were shots with his face and his shin – he tried not to lose his nerve. Nor get carried away by the insinuations of chaos proposed by a desperate Simeone.
Maybe because Gündogan, Pedri and De Jong, at least until the last quarter of an hour, controlled time and space. It didn’t matter that Barça failed to extend their lead. Raphinha did almost everything well. He only needed to orient his feet well when hitting. One of them ended up on the stick.
The hands of Iñaki Peña
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A boy managed to get to the center of the field to ask for the twilight Lewandowski’s shirt in the middle of the game. Araujo denied Griezmann the way with the same determination with which De Jong did when he had to go out in front of him. And above all, Iñaki Peña took two of the hands out of his life a free kick from Memphis and already in the twilight against Correa. Atlético did not arrive because, this time, Barça did recognize itself.
And João Félix, in the dead of night, sought the embrace of his companions, protagonists of a dusty choral work typical of the blood meridian by Comarc McCarthy. “What unites men is not sharing bread but enemies”.