Down by the bench Barcelona’s players were preparing for a sprint, much as they had a month ago. Back then, four matches without a victory had meant their lead at the top of the league had virtually disappeared, forcing them to go and win it again in Gerard Pique’s words. On Saturday, they’d done just that.
There were a few minutes left at Los Carmenes when Luis Suarez scored the third to secure five wins in five and the title too. Over the opposite side of the ground, supporters had come down to the front ready to make a break for it and the players were doing the same. Standing, hopping from foot to foot as the clock ticked, edging forward towards the touchline. On their marks, set ...
Go! The final whistle went and the players raced on to the pitch, Munir taking an early lead. They leapt into each others' arms, champions again. Barcelona's players circled, celebrating, a kid in glasses clinging to Pique's side. From the four corners of the ground, hundreds of fans hurtled towards them like human arrows, as if emergency evacuation instructions had been issued and the team were the assembly point. Barcelona fans ran, Granada fans too. In the middle somewhere were the players. Eventually they bundled through and into the tunnel. Leo Messi's shirt was handed over, Iniesta said a few words, and they went back on to the pitch; this time a ring of yellow bibs protected a patch of it for their public party.
That was just the start. "The party will be a long one," Ivan Rakitic said. "I'm boring, but I'll enjoy it in my 46-year-old way," said the Barcelona manager Luis Enrique with a smile. "And I've told the players to have a big party; they deserve it." Outside the away dressing room stood Granada's Isaac Cuenca. A former Barca player, he had decided not to go in yet. "They were celebrating," he explained, so he waited. Eventually the players emerged. Barcelona's bus left at three minutes past eight, bound for the airport. When their flight home landed, they were applauded off the plane; fans with flares lined their route back to Sant Joan Despi, while others headed down the Ramblas. The Camp Nou was packed; Bruce Springsteen was playing. "Congratulations, Barcelona!" he announced, in Catalan.
The Vela Hotel near the sea awaited that night and an open-topped bus parade the next day. “I’m going to really give my all on that,” Pique announced. And why not? This had become the title that Barcelona might lose, the greatest collapse of them all, but it ended up another title that they did win. If winning the league had felt like an obligation rather than an opportunity, that sensation had gone by Saturday night, blown away like the blossom here. Sure, mad Madridista Tomas Roncero hailed Zinedine Zidane’s league in AS, but no one else did. “This tastes of glory,” Iniesta said, adding: “winning the league can never be a bad season.” Still less winning it again: this was Barca’s sixth in eight years. And there’s still a Copa del Rey final to come.
“There are people who have become too used to the good times and think that this is not a big deal but if winning the league is a bad year, it’s time to pack up, switch off the lights and go home,” Luis Enrique said. “I would like people to appreciate what this means, how difficult it is to win the title. Just look at opponents of our level and how hard they find it.” Opponents such as Madrid, in other words. They have the Champions League final of course, and that will always eclipse everything else, but in the eight years that Barcelona have won six league titles, Madrid have won only one. Of the last 12 Barca have won eight, Madrid three.
“Richly deserved!” ran the cover of Sport, and they would say that, but ultimately few could argue. Barcelona have scored more goals than anyone else, on 112, and between them Messi, Suarez and Neymar have scored 130 goals in all competitions this season. They beat Atletico twice and Real Madrid 4-0. They had been top since October. And when it looked like they could be hauled down from there, they held on. If there was satisfaction for Madrid in pushing Barcelona to the line, Zidane justifiably proud of players who finished the season with 12 consecutive victories with a European final to come, there could also be satisfaction for Barca in resisting their challenge.
After 39 games without a defeat, five games in April threatened to ruin everything: knocked out of the Champions Leagueby Atletico, Barcelona were defeated by Madrid in the clasico and three more winless matches followed; when Pique scored in the second clasico of the season, Barcelona were momentarily 13 points ahead of Madrid, the season all over, but with five weeks to go they led their biggest rivals by a solitary point. Only their head-to-head record kept them above Atletico.
Defeat against Valencia left them with no margin of error. The crapping-yourself-ometre made a comeback, so did the heebie-jeebies. Luis Enrique was turning into Carlos Queiroz, crowed their critics. They were wrong, and in more ways than one.
“Do you think you will have to win all five to win the league and do you think you can?” Luis Enrique was asked. “Yes and yes,” he said. And so it proved. Barcelona’s response was emphatic: five wins out of five, aggregate score: 24-0. When it became a sprint for the line, they got there first.
“We spoke about it; we knew we had to trust in ourselves,” Sergio Busquets admitted under the stand at Los Carmenes on Saturday, a league title winner for the sixth time. “It’s a pity not to have won the league before and above all to be knocked out of the Champions League but that day [after losing to Valencia], there was a positive message: we were the same players that had been spectacular last year and for much of this year too,” he said. There were conversations, conclusions drawn. Like what? “Those stay in the dressing room,” Busquets smiled.
Barcelona stood up. “We had to win the league twice; when we were eight, nine or 10 points clear we had ‘won’ it and then with that dip it was like we had lost it, even though we were leaders,” Pique said. “I have the feeling that 20 years ago we would not have won this league; too often we were sunk by our own pessimism.” Not this time, and few symbolise that better than him. After the Valencia game, he had insisted: “we will win the league: I am sure of it.” Busquets added on Saturday: “We were convinced, although there are some who saw more darkness than others. Gerard is fundamental, a leader.” Pique will be president one day, said the president Josep Maria Bartomeu: “I’d love that. Why not?”
Like his team-mates, Pique celebrated while wearing a t-shirt that read: "S'ha demostrat". They had demonstrated something, all right: personality as well as play. Messi, Dani Alves, Iniesta, and Javier Mascherano, in particular, had been superb. But few had led quite like Pique or Suarez, the man who embodied much of their evolution last year and has proven decisive this. Of those 24 goals in the final five games, when there was no margin for error, Suarez scored 14. This weekend, when the title was on the line, he got a hat-trick. In the buildup to the game, the Catalan daily Sport had suggested that Suarez needed to win this title to overcome the disappointment of losing it with Liverpool - because presumably last year's treble never happened, like - and if there were tears at Crystal Palace there were celebrations at Los Carmenes.
A season that started with him scoring at San Mames up at one end of Spain ended with him scoring in Granada, down at the other. Three more goals to take him to 40 league goals for the season,59 over all, and Barcelona to the title.
No one has ever scored more league goals in a season except Messi and Ronaldo, the men from whom Suarez has just taken the top scorer award for the first time in seven years. Oh, and he provided 16 assists in the league too, more than anyone else. “Lucho’s league,” Marca’s called it. “Luis Suarez’s league,” AS agreed. “I just had to tap it in,” Suarez shrugged. It was almost 8pm when he left the dressing room and there was mayhem under the stands where the engine was running on the team bus, hundreds of people screamed from behind the plastic barriers and the Granada striker Youssef El-Arabi was waiting for him; his two sons wanted a photo.
Suarez stopped and smiled. Under his arm was the match ball, signed by the Barcelona players who’d just won the league again.
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