For those who hoped that the new season would be a relief from the animus between Barcelona and Real Madrid, things began in an ignominious fashion. Before the summer of 2011 was out, the second leg of the Super Cup encounter between Real Madrid and Barça at the Nou Camp ended in a nasty brawl, as – with Barcelona leading 3–2 on the night and 5–4 on aggregate – Marcelo was sent off for a wild tackle on Fàbregas, who was making his debut after being re-signed from Arsenal. Meanwhile Mourinho was caught on camera reaching through the melee and hooking his finger into the eye of Guardiola’s friend and assistant, Tito Vilanova. Not for the first time, the enmity between the two sets of players threatened to overshadow the football played. Across both legs there had been plenty to celebrate, as Ronaldo fizzed with energy and purpose, scoring his hundredth Real Madrid goal. However, he was yet again trumped by Messi’s goals and assists, which always made Barcelona the more likely team to win the day.
Yet Mourinho continued not only to be tolerated but ever more supported by the Madrid president Florentino Pérez. When Jorge Valdano had been unceremoniously paid off for the final two years of his contract in May, José Mourinho was made ‘head of football operations’ as well as head coach, which was a massive strengthening of his power base. In some quarters this was viewed with alarm, as a rejection of the dignified, Real Madrid way of doing things, suggestive of a Faustian pact to win at any cost, but most Real Madrid fans greeted the news with a gleeful shrug, because his psychological tactics were showing themselves to be only one small part of the team he had built up.
Easy as it was for Barça fans and the Barcelona media to caricature Mourinho as a hooligan, there was no doubting that Real Madrid began the new season much better than they had the previous one, and were playing with style, cohesion and a real hunger for goals. They had brought in Nuri Şahin, Hamit Altintop and Fábio Coentrão. Their League season began with a 6–0 away win over Real Zaragoza, which included a hat-trick from Ronaldo. Although they had a mini blip, losing to lowly Levante and drawing with Racing de Santander in their next two games, they went on a run of ten straight victories in the lead-up to the first Clásico, with Ronaldo scoring fourteen goals, including three hat-tricks. Barcelona, on the other hand, had already dropped eleven points by the time they met, with costly draws against Valencia, Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao. In spite of this, Messi was still in sparkling form, scoring seventeen goals in fifteen games, also including three hat-tricks. So ludicrous had the levels of performance that these teams reached become that Barcelona’s aggregate score of 49–4 over those fixtures left them looking dour and defensive, in the face of Madrid’s 57–9 over the same period.
The only really important stat was that Real Madrid were three points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand, the early season momentum with them, and the story was that Mourinho was finally in the right place to properly land a blow on Barcelona. This, after all, was a man who kept a picture of himself celebrating his win over Barcelona hanging over his desk.
There had already been the sense that he’d got into Guardiola’s head. Whether it was questioning Barcelona’s relationship with UEFA, or UNICEF, or referees, it had eventually got through. Though Barcelona had ultimately triumphed in their Champions League showdown the season before, it had been noted that Guardiola lost his cool, referring to Mourinho as the ‘f***ing chief’ on live television in a furious interview. Bit by bit, the story went, Mourinho was dragging Guardiola out of his comfort zone and into the place where the Special One thrived. A word bandied about was that Barcelona looked ‘frail’.
The counter story to this, of course, was that Barcelona’s players were only human. They had operated at the peak of performance for two seasons, in an intensely physically and mentally demanding system. If there was a dip in their performances, it was only to be expected. Yet even with this dip, they were going into this first game very much in touching distance of Madrid. No need to panic.
Within twenty-one seconds, Madrid were ahead, as a sliced clearance from Valdés pinballed its way around various players, before Benzema looped the ball in. In pouring rain, Barcelona seemed to have forgotten how to play football, as they slipped and slid around the pitch, Valdés continually punching when he should have been catching. The whole team seemed infected with nerves and doubts. Suddenly the rumour that they had closed off Plaza de Cibeles, an area of Madrid where fans gathered to celebrate national team victories, in case of a Madrid win, didn’t seem so outlandish.
However, half an hour in and Barcelona equalized, completely against the run of play. Messi drove through the centre of the pitch, Madrid players drawn to him as if to a magnet, before he released Alexis Sánchez, who drilled the ball into the net.
Now it was Madrid’s turn to shrink from the ball and Barcelona whose touch and passing had suddenly returned. Eight minutes into the second half, and a massive deflection on a speculative Xavi shot saw Casillas wrong-footed and the net bulge.
Just after the hour, Ronaldo missed a clear chance when unmarked eight yards out, but his header went wide. Almost immediately, Barcelona went up the other end and scored from a Fàbregas header. Celebrations for Barcelona, heads in hands for Madrid. The rest of the game petered out with Madrid unable to force matters.
Real Madrid had had Barça where they wanted them, but two big misses from Ronaldo had let them off.
After this result, both teams then embarked on another sequence of phenomenal performances, as Barcelona dropped seven points in the next seventeen games. Real Madrid however dropped only six in the next eighteen.
As the autumn turned to winter in the 2011–12 season, Mourinho went relatively quiet all of a sudden, and adopted an air of civility that had been lacking just a month earlier, when he had become an easy target for his detractors. His relaxed mode reflected confidence in his young players and their ability to play good football without resorting to thuggery. He had also been asked by Pérez to try and win hearts and minds, rather than risk losing Real Madrid any friends it had ever had. Soon Mourinho was being judged by his results, not by his words. The chorusing of Mourinho’s name by Real Madrid fans was unprecedented. No manager or coach in the club’s history has secured such popularity.
By then the definitive main attraction in La Liga was the performance of its two rival stars, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, both of whom had begun to make a habit of breaking records, not least their own. Spanish sports journalist Santiago Segurola described the unfolding drama of world football over this period to me thus:
FC Barcelona with Guardiola had won six titles with a team that captured the imagination of a global audience and with a quite spectacular player called Messi. So Real Madrid counter-attacks with a claim that not only is it the most successful club in Spanish football history, but it now has one of the best players in the world . . . so we have the battle ground set between Cristiano and Messi, players who have very different characteristics and yet some similarities – in football terms they are players that can define games, they are both goal scorers . . . In Cristiano’s case you have a player who, properly managed, can fit in with Real Madrid’s identity – a complete singlemindedness, and an extraordinary capacity to pillage the opponent. Cristiano inherits the mantle of Di Stéfano, a player who is irresistible in front of goal, who wants to win at all costs, and who refuses to be second best.1
The decades-old, see-sawing rivalry between the two clubs was increasingly being defined by the tit-for-tat record-breaking of their star players.
Watching the sheer volume and quality of their goals over this period is to wonder at just how their rivalry has driven them on to ever greater heights. You can trace it in the pattern of their goals: a brace by one sees a hat-trick by the other the following game, matched by another hat-trick by the other.
In the period between the two Clásicos, Messi scored twenty-three goals in seventeen games, Ronaldo twenty-four in eighteen. There were other players making extremely valuable contributions in both teams, but here was a parallel championship, narrowed to these two players.
By the time of the return Clásico in April, some damaging recent draws by Madrid had left the gap between them and Barcelona at only four points, the difference having been ten points just a few weeks before. Mourinho had won only one of ten previous Clásicos. If Barcelona won, as the Clásico form book suggested they would, then it would be only one point.
There was all to play for in the final Clásico of the season, with Guardiola knowing that the Special One was not only laying siege to the football Camelot that the Catalan had nurtured and developed over three seasons, but was potentially about to breach its defences before pillaging and plundering the system and style of play that for a while had been the wonder of the world.
Guardiola had reminded Messi and the other players that they only had one option, which was to win. Lose or draw and Real Madrid, given the number of points that had opened up between them, would be League champions. Ronaldo sprinted around Busquets, winning a free kick, which led to a shot by Ángel Di María which went behind for a corner. Valdés made a mess of judging the flight of the corner; although he made a save, the ball bounced around the goal line and Khedira managed to poke the ball home. Barcelona were out of sorts. Xabi Alonso was expertly denying Messi the space he needed and Iniesta looked off the pace. They looked sluggish out wide and predictable in their passing through the centre. Even when they did get a sight on goal, they wasted the opportunity. Madrid, on the other hand, looked poised and potent, ready to spring forward whenever they won the ball back. In the second half, the two best chances fell to that season’s youthful hope, Cristian Tello, but he miscued one and blasted the other over the bar. The pressure was building but Madrid were holding firm. Suddenly their patient passing seemed ill suited to the pressure of the clock. By contrast, Ronaldo was as energized with the ball at his feet as a greyhound chasing a hare.
Barcelona brought Alexis Sánchez on as a last roll of the dice with twenty minutes to go, and within two minutes he had equalized, bundling the ball over the line after Casillas had made two smart saves.
But whatever hope had been raised in the Nou Camp by Alexis Sánchez’s goal was extinguished within three minutes, courtesy of Cristiano Ronaldo.
As the Nou Camp roared its support for the home team, Ronaldo took a pass from Mesut Özil and ran at an angle, coolly clipping the ball around the Barça goalkeeper for his forty-second goal of the season. As he ran to celebrate he motioned downwards with his palms and could be seen mouthing ‘Calma’ and then gesturing to himself. Whether it was mainly aimed at the Barcelona fans, himself or his teammates, the message was clear: on the biggest stage of all, it was business as usual this time. The Barcelona fans could be heard cursing him long into the night.
Less than a week later, in front of a clearly emotional phalanx of Barcelona players, Guardiola formerly announced that he would not be renewing his rolling one-year contract. After four years, the Guardiola era was over. He spoke of needing to rest and recharge, of it being ‘his time’. And looking at him, it was hard to argue. The last two seasons, in their different ways, had taken their toll. He seemed physically diminished, at various points no longer untouchable, above the tit-for-tat of the grinding week on week of La Liga. After rapturous applause, Barça sporting director Andoni Zubizareta announced that Tito Vilanova would be taking his place.
Messi didn’t attend the press conference. Instead he made a statement on Facebook, saying: ‘Because of the emotions I feel I preferred not to be present at Pep’s press conference and to stay away from the press because I know they will look for the pain on the players’ faces. It is something I decided not to show.’
Real Madrid won their remaining games, delivering the League title to Real Madrid by nine points, and securing Mourinho’s seventh League championship title in four countries. How the tables had turned since the humiliating 5–0 Clásico defeat that Mourinho’s Real Madrid had suffered during his first season as manager in La Liga. They had won La Liga in record-breaking form. They achieved a record thirty-two wins, a record sixteen away wins, reached a record 100 points, and set a new goal record of 121, to finish with the highest-ever goal difference.
During the 2011–12 season, Ronaldo surpassed his previous goal-scoring feats to achieve a new personal best of sixty goals across all competitions, and became the first player in history to score against all other nineteen clubs in a single Spanish top-flight season.
And how different were Cristiano and Leo’s moods as they went into summer. Under Mourinho’s management, Ronaldo had found his compass, recovering the drive and motivation that had defined his best years at Manchester United. Ronaldo had been confirmed as the undisputed star of the team with a series of virtuoso performances, rising to the challenge week after week, showing off the athleticism, multiple skills, commitment and goal-scoring ability that had Madrid aficionados finally warming to him, not so much as a person, but as a player who knew how to sweat for the shirt and win. His and Mourinho’s future seemed unified and pointing in one direction: up.
Ronaldo’s only disappointment that season was that he was held responsible by Real Madrid fans for the elimination of his team in the semi-final of the Champions League, when his penalty against Bayern Munich was saved by Manuel Neuer. Even here, though, there was some relief that Messi had missed his penalty against Chelsea, sending Barcelona out of the Champions League. As Mourinho put it in the press conference after the game: ‘The best footballers miss penalties the same way that the best tennis players don’t always win their match points. Ronaldo missed a penalty just as Messi missed a decisive penalty. People act like they are Superman, but Superman is a film.’
Even in his moment of adversity, Ronaldo had Mourinho in his corner, fighting on his behalf; Messi, on the other hand, was contemplating a season ahead without the manager who had done as much as anyone to develop him as a player. Even still, it was clear Ronaldo was as focused on Messi as ever.
In an interview in May 2012, Ronaldo displayed a certain frustration at being asked about Messi, instead of being judged on his own terms.
‘Sometimes it makes me tired . . . for him too because they compare us together all the time,’ he told CNN World Sport. ‘You cannot compare a Ferrari with a Porsche because it’s a different engine. You cannot compare them . . . He does the best things for Barcelona, I do the best things for Madrid, so the number [of goals] . . . everyone says “it’s incredible”. For him and for me because we beat our own records, so it’s amazing. I think we push each other sometimes in the competition, this is why the competition is so high. This is why Madrid and Barcelona are the best teams in the world because everyone pushes each other.’2
Messi, on the rare occasions he gave interviews, also tired of being asked about Ronaldo, but then he didn’t really like being asked about anything. Unlike Ronaldo, he didn’t need to press his case. He let the football do it for him.
‘It’s only the media, the press, who wants us to be at loggerheads but I’ve never fought with Cristiano,’ Messi told the sports daily Olé later that summer, a period during which reports about their rivalry intensified.3
Messi also said there had never been ‘any kind of quarrel or anything’ with Ronaldo, whom he called ‘a great player’, while speaking in Frankfurt before a friendly between Argentina and Germany in August 2012.4
But while Messi has never let slip any particular irritation, and always insisted he has no quarrel with Ronaldo, he is viewed as a nemesis by the Portuguese star, as a permanent point of reference, in his view, all too often used to unfairly misjudge him. Ronaldo had stayed away from the FIFA Ballon d’Or ceremony for 2011, which many people read as a public sign that he resented his rival being considered better than him. No one thought he was going to stay away from the 2012 ceremony.
As Ronaldo left for the European Championships in Poland and Ukraine, he could be forgiven for thinking the pendulum was swinging as far in his favour as it ever had done.