Barça-Madrid 3: It All Becomes Too Much But Not For Messi

Credit: ITV Sport
One of the more typical scenes of the match

       My high school Biology teacher always taught the autonomous nervous system with a parable: "Parents always worry when their children dare to hold their breath" he produced.  "But I always tell them that there isn't any way that their kid will be able to carry through with it.  At worst they'll faint, and the ANS will kick in again, innervating breathing."  Whether or not those words comforted the parents (and whether or not he meant for them to) is open for debate, but in those words Mr. Steinkamp had imparted a bare truth about biology: You just can't betray it.

       But of course that does not mean you cannot try to outfox it.  Holding your breath is just one form of disobedience against your own natural laws, and perhaps it is the most rudimentary.  Others forms include eating an entire chocolate fudge cake, taking a bike ride up and down the mountains, embarking to understand Onsager's reciprocal relations in one night, and trying to follow four gripping clásicos in eighteen days.  Sometimes too much of a good thing just gets damned awful.

 Pepe throws away the initiative

       Certainly that is how it felt as an air of rabidity swept nearly everyone in the Bernabéu, although it was only Madrid who collapsed under it.  As I wrote in my last piece, in Wednesday's match I was hoping to witness Mourinho continue to tinker with his tactical experiments against a Barça side who have not been more depleted in recent times.  I was taken in by the complexity of his defensive arrangements, but when the logic behind that cynical surfeit was lost there was nothing left to defend it.  More crucially when that logic was lost the entire strategy fell.
       Most critics and commentators tend to label Mourinho's tactical philosophy in broad terms.  This is a problematic way to describe any team's tactics, but it is doubly so for Mourinho's Madrid.  Madrid have deferred to Barça being the superior side in terms of flowing, combinatorial football, but their current approach is far from a simple "park the bus" game plan.  Under Mourinho, Madrid have been drilled to cut off specific supply points in the Barça line-up, and they have changed their targets in both of the previous matches. In the first match Pepe marked Messi out of the match, while in the second he focused more on Xavi.  Frankly it is impossible to ensure that every Barça player has a terrible game on any night let alone on a clásico, so Mourinho has had to constantly assess, predict, and determine which Barça player(s) to focus his defensive stranglehold on.  It's an approach with little margin for error and no margin for nonsense.
      Given that, it does little for Mourinho to complain about Pepe's red card.  Its color will be debated, but in his passion to battle on the pitch Pepe completely lost sight of the grander scheme.  Pepe may defend his lunge as a directed effort to win the ball, but considering strategy it was entirely aimless.  Damningly unnecessary, it occurred in Barça's third of the pitch with Barça posing little risk of a counter attack.  Both of Madrid's other midfielders, Xabi and Lass, were a safe distance behind the ball, and Di Maria was also present on the left wing to stymie Alves's run, need be.  Pepe's thoughtlessness highlighted the reason why there was such an acrimonious reception to the match from the casual observer.  It is not that the preceding two matches were not as testy or competitive, but in this third match one could not help that both teams were drawn to be cynical for no constructive reason. Unsurprisingly this negative football did not help either team win the match, and specifically it caused Madrid to lose.

Credit: ITV Sport
Pepe goes kung fu fighting

        After Madrid were reduced to ten men, Guardiola's options suddenly multiplied.  Against ten men, Guardiola was able to exchange David Villa for Afellay, which he might not have otherwise.  Because the score was 0-0, normally one would not want to substitute a goalscoring forward with the calibre of Villa even though he was playing poorly, but against ten men Guardiola easily inserted Afellay who is more of an assister and provider than Villa.  Guardiola's decision was justified when Afellay's cross met Messi's feet and created the opener.  Villa's terrible night was ended as Afellay's gleaming one began.

Mourinho descends into madness

        But the most startling aspect of play after the red card was that Mourinho "made no effort to counter Barca's man advantage".  He did not make a single change to strengthen Madrid's hold in the midfield, or frankly in any area.  When the match begged most for a tactical change, one of the game's most heralded tacticians went to grab his coat and headed for the stands.  Mourinho blatantly admitted defeat to Barca in his post-match press conference, but he had already done so in the match an hour earlier. 
         Of course before the match, Mourinho played a different tune in his conferences, taking every shot he could to make defeat sour for his opponents, and in doing so it seemed he had succeeded.  Guardiola uncharacteristically responded in an angry tirade before issuing the challenge, "Off the pitch, he has already won, as he has done all year. On the pitch, we'll see what happens."  With his art of dissemination, Mourinho seemed to have won the verbal battle as he so often does.  This is because Mourinho is savviest when he slyly underlines his verbal attacks as if they were undeniable truths ("Guardiola is the first coach in history to rue a good decision by a referee", he let slip).   This frustrates opposing coaches to no end and causes them to make mistakes, but on this occasion, Guardiola was vindicated both on the pitch and afterwards in the media.  On Wednesday, Mourinho was the one who became flustered in the most acute moments of the match, and afterwards he could only cut an angry, contemptuous figure as he rattled on aimless jibes to Barca, UEFA, the referees, and the press.  At once his speech attacked seemingly everyone in football, yet at once it was not aimed at anyone in particular.  Mourinho was left trying to grab at anything he could after a thoroughly miserable match.

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Mourinho was ushered off to the stands moments after Pepe's dismissal

Messi the hero once more

         But perhaps in his defeatist monologue, Mourinho was only concealing the fact that he could not have done anything to stop Lionel Messi.  In an odd mix of self-pity and meltdown, Mourinho was only sequestering attention away from Messi who'd produced two of the greatest goals in the sport's history.  It was a feat all the more spectacular as it had blossomed from the most infertile of premises.  Before the match I noted that because Guardiola was limited in his tactical options, both in his deployment and instruction to his players, the players would have to take it upon themselves to carve a moment of brilliance.  Essentially they would have to improvise to overcome Mourinho's defenses.  Guardiola found that much needed improvisation in a player who's framed his legend on such bursts of pure genius: Lionel Messi.
        Afellay's gilded cross may have provided Messi with both the pace and position of the ball needed to tap it into the net, but Messi still needed to beat three Madrid defenders to reach it.  The sheer brilliance of his run was reflected in its aftermath: Xabi Alonso could only wildly gesture while he lamented yielding a goal to the isolated forward in the box.

Credit: ITV Sport
Messi had to beat a host of white shirts to break the deadlock

         As for the second goal, it was a classic mazy dribble where Messi is teed the ball by a teammate as he then proceeds to unravel the entire opposition, while his teammates merely stand and applaud.  Both goals were startling in their splendor and in their contrast.  For the first, Messi had to find space without the ball.  For the second, he had to carve space with it.  Perhaps the only commonality between them was how effortless they appeared.
         But for the longest time it seemed as though Messi would never find the breakthrough to win the match.  Still if someone were to watch only those two goals they would think that he was dominating throughout it.  That is a mark of class few possess.  The quality of his goals speak of the effort Messi puts in to every run, every touch, and every move.  After his first Ballon D'Or, the footballing world could not help but feel that as good as he was Messi could only get better.  While before there was a slight tendency for him to be demoralized and marked out of matches, since then he has rose to the occasion repeatedly.  Since then he has been the one to save Barça, and on this particular night, football.

Concluding remarks

       It was certainly fitting that Messi made both breakthroughs.  For all the negativity and cynicism throughout the match, Messi was one of the few players most removed from it.  He had to rise above the mind games, tread over the tackles, and block out the abuse of the madridistas, but the beauty was that by the end of the night he was enjoying all of it.  My Biology teacher may have been right about most of us not being able to tread past our physical and mental boundaries, but on Wednesday night Messi did.  It certainly was not easy for him, though he made it look so, but importantly he accepted the challenge without hesitation. 

       So let your kids hold their breath and eat all the cookies from the jar, because with age they'll convert that daring into greater, more considerable feats.  Otherwise God knows they may end up like Mourinho's Madrid on a night they can not afford to.

Fabregas's Nightmare

Fabregas couldn't cast the influence he wanted in Wednesday's match.  Shaun Botterill/Getty Images

                 

                 "IT'S LIKE RAAIIIN ON YOUR WEDDDING DAY, WHEN CESC FABREGASSS GIVESSS THE BALLL AWAYYY!" would have been the chants at Camp Nou if they sang in English and had a particular taste for Alanis Morissette.  The Catalans did not get to see Fabregas play in the shirt they've begged for him to wear since last year, yet with one botched backheel he gifted Barcelona the goal they needed to shift momentum in the tie.
                  Well, perhaps that is a harsh assessment given the circumstances.  Barcelona were racking pressure on Arsenal in a manner that even surpassed the 4-1 drubbing they delivered upon them in the same ground last year.  Messi was the main culprit that time around, whereas on this day the entire Barcelona team lived up to a smothering pressing style which has now become eponymous with the side.  With swarms of blau-grana shirts homing in on wherever the ball might be with an unmistakable clairvoyance, it was only a matter of time before Arsenal would forfeit their last breath of hope.  But if Arsenal's hopes were to expire no Gunner would have wished that they expired on the feet of their illustrious captain, a player whom Jaume Marcet, a reporter for Barca during Fabregas's youth days, remembers others pointing to and saying,  "Watch Francesc Fabregas.  He does not make a single mistake."   A player whom Arsenal have relied on being the coordinator of their passing game, the fulcrum between their lines.
                  So just how did one of football's most reliable heroes end up suffering possibly the most miserable night of his career?  Moments after the match Michael Cox of Zonal Marking noted that, "Fabregas is far from a stupid player, but Barcelona were pressuring so much that he felt he had to do something ‘clever’ merely to complete a pass on the edge of his own penalty area."  Indeed Fabregas was shaken by the brunt of Barcelona's attack as was the entire Arsenal squad.  Wenger had changed the shape and selection of his team from the 4-1 lesson they'd suffered, opting for two holding  midfielders and replacing "Bambi on Ice" Denilson with the more decisive Wilshere, but even then there was never any confusion as to which team was dominating.  Wenger had finally gained the defensive nous and practicality many have clamored for in his tactics, but Arsenal's counterattacking threat was absent without the pacy Theo Walcott.  The injured pair of Van Persie and Fabregas were only on half-steam and unable to capitalize on the fleeting moments when Arsenal did have the ball.  Indeed Fabregas's hamstring immobilized him just as much as Barca's pressing, and having to cover for Arsenal's defenders all over the pitch did not help him divert stress away from it.  Throughout the match one could find him having to help out on the flanks or dribble around his own area with a hobble too painful not to notice.
                    But returning to the backheel in question, it was more of a mental lapse than a physical breakdown, and Barcelona would not score again until they were awarded a one man advantage.  If Fabregas did feel that he had to try something extravagant to get any sort of grip on the match, it would explain his plain admission afterwards: "I take full blame for the result tonight. One of the worst moments of my life. I apologise."  Fabregas is certainly the kind of player whose decisions must haunt him more than anything.  He has played with countless injuries before, but in tonight's match he faced what I must imagine to be one of the most mentally exhausting experiences a footballer can have.  Splitting his time trying to spot a pass that never materialized and trying to diffuse tensions in an usually testy match between the two clubs (the fracas after a harsh foul on Wilshere from Dani Alves was a particularly revealing moment, with Fabregas the only player trying to moderate with his national teammates on Arsenal's behalf), it was certainly not the homecoming any player would have wanted.  To be blunt, it was a nightmare.  The beloved son of both Arsenal and Barcelona was now caught in a bad-blood battle between them when he never should have been on the pitch in the first place.  
                    At the moment Fabregas did not seem to desire playing for either team.  Certainly the days when he used to play with current Barça players Messi and Pique, taking joy in trouncing opposing youth teams 6-0, 7-0 on a regular basis were long gone, albeit by a decision he'd made 8 years ago.  But Fabregas's move to Arsenal was not out of greed or fame.  One must remember that elegant passers such as Fabregas were quickly turning obsolete over the turn of the century, and a move to England is one many Spanish players aspire for due to the lure of a new footballing experience and an opportunity to toughen up.  Marcet said, "When Cesc left there was a feeling that maybe he was doing the right thing. It would be hard to break into the side with Iniesta and Xavi playing in his position. I'm sure he kept in touch with Pique and maybe that influenced Pique's decision to go to England."  Certainly in the 2006 Champions League Final Fabregas must have felt justified in his move when he started while Xavi and Iniesta were relegated to the bench.  Arsenal lost the match, but back then their star was rising.  Now it seems increasingly resigned to disappointment.
                     But the reason all of this must be torturing Fabregas isn't simply because of the misery in his team's fortunes.  As I wagered earlier, I would say that Fabregas is a player who spends more time being self-critical (rather the opposite of the papers which deride Arsenal on a daily basis) than anything.  His transfer saga has teetered both ways. On some days you'll find him oozing respect for Guardiola saying,  "Without him, I don't know if I would be a professional footballer today. I owe him a lot and I have a special affection for him." And on other days you'll find him obeying Wenger as if he were his father saying, "I respect him so much. He told me to concentrate on my football and the World Cup and he will deal with whatever happens in my future."  The last quote is probably the most revealing.  Fabregas would much rather choose to concentrate on how he's playing than where he is, but on a fateful night in Barcelona he's had to think about both.