The celebration of a unique football. If you wish, this could have been the meaning of yesterday's Clasico, the challenge that for the 259th time pitted Real Madrid and Barcelona, the two most successful teams in Spain. Obviously it was also much more.
It was perhaps the underdog team who won it, Tata Martino's Barça, but above all a magnificent Iniesta and the phenomenal Leo Messi, who also returned to win the challenge in the challenge with the other alien Cristiano Ronaldo for the title, pleonastic if there is one 'is one of the best player in the world. Three goals, for the Argentine flea (two from penalties), and an infinite theory of inventions that set fire to Real's dancing defense.
A Messi who has returned to shine after a somewhat similar period (for someone like him, of course), dispelling for one night even doubts about his physical condition and about a team, Barcelona, which for some time this part has begun to send unequivocal signals of the end of the cycle: no longer Guardiola's joyful band, nor the tired imitation of Roura-Vilanova, but something different and hybrid, still lacking its own dimension, but obviously not its greatness.
Barcelona won, aggressively returning to the center of the fight for the conquest of La Liga (and who knows if, between the two litigants, they won't end up enjoying the third: Cholo Simeone's Atletico Madrid), but it was such a great match to house within it many others, which could lead to any result.
After taking the lead on the Messi-Iniesta axis in the 7th minute, in fact, Barcelona came close to 20-24 with the Argentine flea, who closed the left-handed conclusion too much. As the old adage goes, the inevitable counterpoint to Messi's missed goal was a goal scored by Real, or rather two: Benzema, with a brace between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth minute, overturned the result and at that point it was Barça who risked the capitulation, avoided only by a save on the line by Pique and by Messi's goal, which restored parity at the end of the first half.
In the second half, the festival of doubtful penalties took place. The unfortunate Undiano Mallenco first sent (55′) Cristiano Ronaldo, to tell the truth a bit in the shadows, for a foul outside the box by Dani Alves and then (63′) Leo Messi, for the usual too easy fall by Neymar . On the occasion, the referee also expelled Sergio Ramos. On three to three, and with one more man, Barça besieged (enveloping in its own way: no assaults with white weapons) the Madrid area until the new penalty that closed the dispute, probably the only one that c 'was, for a foul sandwich by Xabi Alonso and Varane on the magician Iniesta. From the penalty spot, Messi set the score at 4-3.
But all these penalties and all the controversies (seeing the vitriolic words of a conspiratorial Cristiano Ronaldo to believe it) do not dirty what has been, nor mitigate the vague melancholy of the Italian spectator in the face of an unsustainable pace of play for each of our teams (yes, even Conte's amazing Juve: the insufficient European roster is there to prove it). More than a game it was a fireworks display, the celebration of a unique football.
