Xabi Alonso took up his favourite position at the Camp Nou, easing into a seat in the stands and looking silently out across the pitch, feet up, job done.
It was some time after Real Madrid had won the Copa del Rey semi-final second leg 3-1 against Barcelona, and the Camp Nou was quiet.
The stadium had been emptying for a while, ever since Raphael Varane headed Real Madrid’s third; by the time Jordi Alba scored Barcelona’s goal in the 88th minute, there were not that many fans left.
If Alonso took it all in, it was difficult for Barcelona fans to do the same. Difficult for their players too. In little over a week, they have been beaten by Milan in the Champions League and knocked out of the Copa del Rey by their greatest rivals.
Positive spin
Xavi Hernandez was trying to put a positive spin on events. “We have lost the least important of the [three] titles,” he said.
On one level, he was right and Barcelona will win the league. But he was also very wrong: Barcelona have lost far more than the least important title. They have lost identity and supremacy, fitness and confidence.
They have been beaten before; what makes this different is this time they have been so deservedly defeated. The cover of AS loudly shouted: “Toma, toma, toma!” Take that, and that, and that!
Clasicos have a habit of feeling definitive somehow, of giving way to sweeping judgments and bold calls, of eras ending. Often it is an exaggeration but for Barcelona on Tuesday night it was hard to avoid the conclusion the problems were about more than just one night.
For all Barcelona’s possession – 63 per cent – they rarely looked like scoring. For all that Madrid’s counterattacking style is often treated in Spain as if it is somehow cheating, it proved devastating, again.
Barcelona proved impotent, again.
Writing in El Mundo Deportivo, Santi Nolla noted: “For the first time in the past few years Madrid were better than Barcelona in more than just the score”.
“Real Madrid are better [than Barcelona] now,” ran the headline in AS. They would say that, wouldn’t they?
Maybe, but they’re right. In October, the league game finished 2-2 at the Camp Nou, which is impressive in itself but it goes deeper: over the past six clasicos Madrid effectively claimed last season’s league title in Barcelona, won a Spanish Super Cup over two legs, and have now reached the Copa del Rey final.
“If the objective in hiring Jose Mourinho was to slay the dragon, mission accomplished,” wrote Juanma Trueba of AS.
As for the other debate, that has tipped very clearly in Cristiano Ronaldo’s favour: on Tuesday he had more shots on target than the entire Barcelona side. Messi did not have one. The Portuguese has scored on his past six visits to the Camp Nou.
“Checkmate” ran the headline in El Pais, Ramon Besa describing Ronaldo as “football’s emperor”.
Sport’s cartoon had Barcelona’s fans reaching for their medical cabinet: anti-depressants for today, Viagra for tomorrow. The front cover headline read: “We have to get up again.”
For Barcelona, the mission is to work out what is wrong and to resolve their problems fast. Milan are on the horizon. But can they?
For the first time, questions are being asked about the impact of Tito Vilanova’s illness. There has been a certain discomfort in talking about it before – it feels a little unfair, grubby and insensitive, when the coach is in the US undergoing chemotherapy for cancer and when Jordi Roura is effectively thrust into a role he did not seek – but on Tuesday it was there.
Picked apart
Talk of Barcelona not needing a coach was picked apart, emphasising the importance of Pep Guardiola and Vilanova.
Roura insisted he has no desire to be anything other than the assistant manager. He also put forward an explanation of his own: Barcelona may be suffering a physical dip, a product of training that aims towards certain peaks, that a relative February drop in fitness and freshness is normal and they recover in March and April.
The risk is, by then, with the league already won, there is nothing to recover for.
Guardian Service
