33. KING CRISTIANO: BLACK DOG MESSI

Jorge Valdano recalled the groups of excited Real Madrid fans walking with a spring in their step on their way to Gareth Bale’s presentation at Real Madrid in 2013 with ‘great smiles, as if they had won the lottery’.

He went on to note: ‘But they hadn’t won anything. They were going to the presentation of Gareth Bale, a player with not a huge record of achievement outside England and Wales until the eleven games played in the Champions League, without any relevant trophy, and having never played in a World Cup . . . The majority of those who walked by in procession had no idea a year earlier who this new planetary idol was. But in recent months Bale had not done anything but be the new player that was about to land in Madrid. With each media report, his price kept rising without him having to play a game. A summer inflation without any football underpinning which allows us to understand certain coordinates of the sport today, above all one: money rules.’1

And it was this expectation that clashed with the reality of what was to be a mildly tortuous integration into a Real Madrid squad. Bale, quiet and down to earth, was faced with the big characters and high profiles of Cristiano Ronaldo and the other Real Madrid players.

Indeed Bale’s initial encounter with Ronaldo at Madrid’s luxurious Valdebebas training ground showed him looking timid, almost awestruck, when welcomed by the man with the biggest social media following in the world and the looks and attitude to launch a thousand commercials.

Some people who had followed Bale’s career closely feared that – despite his ability as a player – he might lack the mental strength to cope with such a big transfer and the immense spotlight that would be put on him in Spain.

In his first season there were some glaring examples of the lack of chemistry between him and Cristiano Ronaldo, as Real Madrid’s latest coach Carlo Ancelotti tried to find a way of accommodating them both with his strategy for the team.

Ancelotti was a famously safe pair of hands. A quietly authoritative, cosmopolitan Italian, who had won championships with whichever clubs he had managed over a varied career. He had won a reputation as a pragmatist, able to find the system best suited to the players. After a summer of more expensive acquisitions, this was thought to be essential. Moreover he was well liked throughout the football world, and Real hoped that the often poisonous atmosphere that had developed towards the end of the Mourinho years might dissipate, as fans had booed the Portuguese several times before games.

Madrid were solid if unspectacular in La Liga, in the build-up to the first Clásico at the end of October 2013. Bale seemed to lack fitness, and though Ronaldo was still scoring with a regularity that most players would regard as the peak of their careers, there was something not quite on the boil.

In one incident that achieved a certain notoriety, Bale and Ronaldo were clearly not on the same page when deciding who was going to take a free kick during a game against Sevilla. As Guillem Balagué recalled it, the award of the free kick ‘gave rise to one of those moments of subtle gestures and revelatory glances whose outcome affects the entire balance of the team.’

Both players had a proven record of turning dead balls into goals. On this occasion, Ronaldo set the ball down with the intention of taking the kick, only to have Bale come over and ask to take it himself. Ronaldo was evidently reluctant, but his appeals to Ancelotti to mediate from the bench went unheeded. The Welshman took it, much to the Portuguese’s evident disgruntlement. Worse still was Ronaldo’s visible reaction when Bale’s strike failed to hit the back of the net and instead sailed over the bar.

The relationship between Ronaldo and Bale was just one of the many difficult man-management tasks facing Ancelotti in this team stuffed full of egos.

Meanwhile, at Barcelona, Gerardo ‘Tata’ Martino had taken over as the new coach in the third week of July 2013, with a keen sense of the enormous challenge he would face to recover some of the living poetry of the Guardiola years. In their search for a replacement for Vilanova, Barcelona had spoken to former midfielder and B team coach Luis Enrique, but he had committed to Celta de Vigo for the coming season. They had also talked to Ernesto Valverde, but he had agreed to join Athletic Bilbao. Both would later end up as managers of Barça’s first team.

As it was, Vilanova’s decision to quit in late July 2013, when the new football season was about to start and most top coaches were settled in the jobs, with the bulk of the summer transfers signed and sealed, meant that Tata Martino had been brought in not as first or even second choice, but as a necessary emergency service. The club board had decided at an early stage, on humanitarian grounds, that Vilanova should be given all the moral and financial support possible, and that he should be allowed to continue in his post for as long as he felt he had the spirit and the strength to do so. Now Tata Martino was being trusted with the task of trying to free Messi from the black dog of depression.

Martino was someone Rosell knew from his days as a Nike executive in the 1990s, when he had developed close business ties in South America. He subsequently became more widely known in Spain when he managed a spirited and well-organized Paraguay side that nearly beat del Bosque’s La Roja in the World Cup in 2010. But it was Rosario-born Martino’s long association with Newell’s Old Boys, Messi’s childhood club, and his huge admiration and respect for someone he had a year earlier called ‘the best player in the world’ that proved a key factor in his appointment.

Personable, and with a reputation for good man-management of players, Martino was, like Pep Guardiola, an admirer of the eccentric but brilliant Rosario-born coach Marcelo Bielsa, under whom he served as a player for Newell’s. But he was thought more pragmatic. He favoured tactics that had been popular at Barça since the Cruyff period and which had adapted themselves to Messi, to ensure that he played where he felt most comfortable and effective.

‘Any coach that comes to Barça with Messi has to be clear that he can’t introduce a system of play that isn’t accountable to him as the leader, that gives him freedom on the pitch . . . We had to find someone who understood this way of playing, and Tata had that,’ said Rosell.2

Martino was sold to the Barça media as someone who would bring continuity as well as stability. But within months of his arrival, the club seemed beset by deepening problems, not all of his own making. In his first season, he also risked having several key players focused less on the club than on international duties.

A World Cup in Brazil lay ahead, which threatened to make or break their international reputations. The tournament in Brazil had Vicente del Bosque’s Spanish squad – with several Barça players still key to its collective sense of identity – defending their world crown. Among the countries most determined to dethrone Spain were the South American powerhouses Argentina and Brazil, whose stars were both Barça players: the Brazilian Neymar, recently transferred from Santos, and, of course, Lionel Messi.

If Ronaldo and Messi were football’s present, then Neymar perhaps represented the future. He was already a well-developed marketing machine by the time he arrived in Spain, and seemed at least as engaged as the Portuguese was with his own celebrity. He also had the on-field talent to back up the hype. The stats showed that on his arrival at FC Barcelona in June 2013, aged twenty-one, Neymar had scored 156 goals in 257 games for Santos and the Brazilian national squad, which was over 100 goals more than those scored by either Ronaldo or Messi at the same age.

Former Nike man Sandro Rosell, the Barça executive who had negotiated his controversial transfer from Santos, believed his marketing potential among a new generation of football fans was even bigger than Messi’s or Ronaldo’s. His arrival represented a leap into the future.

In fairness, Neymar remained a seemingly modest guy when it came to interviews. Asked by a Portuguese-speaking journalist on the eve of the World Cup how he rated himself, Neymar replied: ‘It’s an honour to be compared to the incomparable Pelé. The fact is that Pelé, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo are players that defy comparisons. Right now, in my opinion, Messi is the best in the world.’

And yet he took time to settle down at the Nou Camp, where his habit in his first season there of interrupting play to change his brightly coloured, Nike-branded boots during matches annoyed fans. They suspected a marketing ploy and accused him of being narcissistic, like Ronaldo. In the midst of so much flux, Messi had now become not just the star but the effective captain of the team, a point of reference for all the players for their performance on the pitch, and the person to whom club executives turned to settle agreements over bonus payments, and even to consult over transfers.

As former president Joan Laporta recalled: ‘Once we were flying back from a Champions League match in Paris, when some of the players, including the notional captain Carles Puyol, raised the issue of bonuses. I suggested a figure and Puyol went off to see Messi. He then came back and told me: “OK Presi, I’ve talked to Messi, and he says it’s OK with him, what you’re offering. If it’s OK with him, it’s OK with us” . . . I realized then, as if I had ever had any doubt, that Messi was in charge in the dressing room.’3

Yet this was a player who had no natural inclination to lead others. Whereas Maradona would take to the field, chest all pumped up and head raised, Messi had, over the years, developed a hangdog look. He stepped out on to the turf looking downwards, as if avoiding the glare of flashlights and any eye contact with spectators.

This also contrasted with Real Madrid, where the captaincy in recent years had passed from Raúl to Casillas to Sergio Ramos, all extroverted characters who knew how to raise their voices during a match as effortlessly as they did in the dressing room, the inner sanctum of every major football club. All three captains had managed to develop a compromise arrangement with Ronaldo, showing him respect and not ordering him around in return for his loyalty.

And yet, as those who worked closely with Messi agreed, his leadership was not conveyed in words, let alone speeches, but simply by example, on the pitch. Barça were happiest and at their best when Messi was happy and his best, but all bets were off when he was injured or he failed to find form. The team absorbed Messi’s glow, just as it was thrown into turmoil by his darker moods, which came and went, usually beginning when he disappointed himself – for he was his own biggest critic, despite what the press might think.

He and Barcelona began the first few games of the season in good form, only dropping two points in their first nine games and topping the table. Messi scored eight goals but there was something not quite right. There were rumours of a recurring hamstring injury, of black moods and silences. His manager didn’t seem outwardly worried: ‘He set the bar so high that when he doesn’t score it feels like it’s a problem. But it’s not a problem.’ But still the statisticians said he was touching the ball fewer times, making fewer runs. Messi’s father had only one word for the press: ‘relax’.

The first Clásico of the season passed both Cristiano and Leo by, with both players involved but much less influential than they had been previously. Instead it was Neymar who took the headlines with his first Clásico goal, and a wonder strike from Alexis Sánchez gave Barcelona a 2–0 lead. Jesé pulled a goal back, but Barcelona took first blood, winning 2–1.

Only a few weeks later, the press were reporting that Messi was unhappy with the terms of his contract, after it had been announced that Ronaldo’s new contract was reportedly worth 1 million euros more a year than Messi’s. It was the first time that a story had shown Messi caring about that side of things, and it felt like a shift had occurred.

Both teams made light work of their Champions League fixtures but then as November turned into December, Barcelona lost 2–0 to Ajax and then 1–0 to Athletic Bilbao in quick succession. Messi was injured, believed back in Argentina, and towards the end of the Bilbao game, as Xavi and Iniesta were taken off, Gerard Piqué was pushed up front. It felt like a very public losing of their identity. Martino said he was willing to swap control for penetration. What they got was neither.

Bale seemed to be finally coming to life for Real Madrid whereas, without Messi, Barça struggled to keep a semblance of form. The announcement that Ronaldo had won the 2013 Ballon d’Or was greeted with very little dissent. (Apart from Franck Ribéry, who believed he deserved to win.) Ronaldo had found a whole new set of gears, whereas Messi had merely been excellent compared to every other player in the world.

Ronaldo’s acceptance speech was that of someone professionally and privately happy with their life.

‘First of all I have to say a great thanks to all of my teammates with the club and the national team,’ he said. ‘Without all of their efforts this would not have been possible. I am very happy, it is very difficult to win this award. Everybody that has been involved with me on a personal level I have to thank. My wife, my friends, my son. It is a tremendously emotional moment. All I can say is thank you to everybody that has been involved.’

A few weeks before, Messi had made a rare statement about Ronaldo, telling MARCA: ‘He is always there scoring goals in all the games and taking part in his club and national side. He has been doing that for many years and whether he is at his peak or a bit below it makes no difference.’4

Between the teams’ return from the winter break and the second Clásico in March, Barcelona dropped thirteen points, while Madrid dropped four. Messi scored two goals on his return in January, but wasn’t fooling anybody. This season, the new challenge to both Real Madrid and Barcelona came from Atlético Madrid who, under the permanently combative Diego Simeone, continued to make great strides and were threatening to break the duopoly.

Atlético Madrid just kept on winning: 2014 saw them become what some wags called the third horse in a two-horse race.

Rumbling on in the background was the crisis surrounding Rosell’s presidency that the investigation into Neymar’s transfer had caused, and which ultimately would result in his resignation, after it was revealed that the announced transfer fee was much smaller than the actual payments that had gone to various parties.

Prior to the Clásico in March 2014, some media commentators suggested it could be an era-defining match, with Real Madrid players determined to give FC Barcelona such a thrashing as to leave no doubt that supremacy had shifted back to the men in white for the first time since the pre-Laporta era. It was the kind of hype, not entirely unbiased, that one expected from the Madrid and Barcelona media in the run-up to any El Clásico.

Although the confidence of Real Madrid players proved misplaced, it was a thrilling spectacle nonetheless, with Ronaldo and Messi in the thick of it. The goal scoring began with Andrés Iniesta shooting into the top corner, before Karim Benzema’s brace put Real ahead. Messi restored parity soon after, only to have Cristiano Ronaldo restore Real’s lead from the penalty spot. After Sergio Ramos was sent off, Messi won the game with two penalties. It was described as the Clásico of the century. And for once it felt as if the football, rather than the rivalry, was the main talking point. It was breathless, exhilarating stuff, as Barcelona made light of the form book and reminded Real Madrid that they weren’t finished yet. The teams traded the lead, the game swinging one way and then the other: 0–1, 2–1, 2–2, 3–2, 3–4. In the midst of a ‘crisis’ in his form, it was Messi’s second hat-trick in a row as he became the second highest scorer in La Liga history, moving ahead of former Real Madrid striker Hugo Sánchez on to 236 goals. The Argentine also became the all-time top scorer in Clásicos, with twenty-one goals, surpassing Real Madrid legend Alfredo Di Stéfano. Martino became the fifth Barça coach to win on his first trip to the Santiago Bernabéu. More importantly, they were back within one point of the top of the League.

If they hoped that would be the catalyst for title-winning consistency, though, much as Messi tried to drag them onwards, a damaging defeat away at Granada and three successive draws to close out the season left them second, level on points with Madrid but behind on goal difference. Above them both was Atlético Madrid.

In the midst of Barcelona’s spring woes, Atlético had also put them out of the Champions League, with a bruising 1–1 draw at the Nou Camp, followed by a 1–0 victory at home, where Atlético also hit the woodwork three times. Barcelona were crowded out of the game all over the pitch, and Messi could do nothing to drag them back into it.

A week later, they lost the Copa del Rey final to Real Madrid, as a strangely subdued performance saw Messi utterly peripheral. Ronaldo was out injured, but Bale came up with the goods, sprinting from the halfway line, slipping the ball around the Barcelona defence and outpacing everyone before coolly sliding the ball past Pinto, the Barcelona keeper.

While they were third best in the League, Madrid cruised through their own Champions League qualifying group, with Ancelotti crafting just the right balance between attack and defence, often with devastating results. Ronaldo was in imperious form and became the first player ever to score nine goals in the group stage. In their 9–2 aggregate defeat of Schalke over two legs in the first knockout round, Ronaldo had scored another four goals. They survived a scare against Borussia Dortmund in the next round, after winning the home leg 3–0 but losing the second 2–0, and in the semi-final, they found themselves up against a familiar foe in the opposite dug-out as they drew Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, with the first leg at home.

It was a classic mix of styles, as Bayern Munich looked to control the ball, attempting to pass Real to death. However, the goal when it came was a classic bit of Madrid counter-attacking, as when a Bayern move broke down, first Ronaldo and then Fábio Coentrão carried the ball forwards at pace before Benzema passed the ball into the net from six yards. It wasn’t a perfect performance, Ronaldo grimaced in disgust at himself as he missed an easy chance from twelve yards, but Guardiola’s words that he was proud of his team rang hollow. Ancelotti certainly wasn’t getting complacent, saying, ‘We have a bit of an advantage, but nobody can say what is going to happen.’

What happened was exactly what Pérez would have hoped when he hired Ancelotti. In the face of Guardiola’s patented brand of possession football, Madrid simply kept compact and then hit them with ruthless counter-attack after counter-attack. Even before their first goal, Bale had sliced through the midfield. Sergio Ramos, who had missed his penalty two years before in the semi-final shootout, scored two thumping headers within the first twenty-five minutes, to leave Bayern Munich with a mountain to climb.

As they tried to put pressure on Real, without ever really threatening their goal, a lightning-fast counter-attack just after the half-hour saw Di María and Benzema exchange passes and release Bale, who found Ronaldo and he drove it with power from just inside the area: 3–0 to Real Madrid. For most of the second half, Madrid let Bayern have the ball, keeping them at bay with ease. Then, with a minute to go, Madrid won a free kick twenty yards out. Ronaldo bent the ball under the wall as they jumped and into the net.

The tiki-taka style, so often behind Barcelona’s dominance over Real Madrid, had been defeated, to such an extent that some wondered if it would ever recover. Guardiola was vanquished; Ancelotti had taught him a tactical lesson. Real were in the final of the Champions League and the Decima – the club’s tenth European title – was on.

If there was a moment that Cristiano first experienced the possibility of realizing his dream of unconditional respect from his Portuguese compatriots and Real Madrid fans it was when he walked out in the Champions League final at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon on 24 May 2014.

The game started slowly, with Atlético seemingly happy to sit deep and deny Bale and Ronaldo the space they’d used to such good effect against Bayern.

Half an hour in and the only real chance had fallen to Bale, when he’d shot just wide of the goal under pressure from Tiago.

Then Madrid found themselves behind when a poorly cleared corner was swung back in and Godín, challenging on the penalty spot, looped a header backwards that Casillas saw pass over him and into the net. It was Real’s turn to be taught a tactical lesson, as Simeone’s team kept Madrid unbalanced with strong challenges, denying them time and space. They seemed all set to keep Real at bay when, in the ninety-third minute, two corners in quick succession left Ramos stretching to guide a low header into the bottom corner.

As the first period of extra time played out, Ronaldo seemingly couldn’t do a thing right, as his extra time consisted of scuffed shots and improbable runs. Five minutes into the second period, a low shot from Ángel Di María bounced up off Thibaut Courtois’ legs and there was Bale to head home. Five minutes later, a very tired Atlético side failed to close down Marcelo and his long shot made it 3–1. And then, in the last minute of extra time, Godín bundled down Ronaldo. Ronaldo stepped up, powered the penalty into the back of the net and took his top off to stand shining under the lights. An image dutifully captured by a special camera that was filming an authorized documentary on his life. Player and brand perfectly synchronized, in a display that had his detractors cringing because of its narcissism.

Even the Real Madrid official website recognized that Cristiano Ronaldo was far from being the man of the match, choosing to pick Sergio Ramos and Ángel Di María as the stand-out players instead. But if there was one personality trait that Ronaldo never lacked, it was self-belief.

Real Madrid’s Decima had an epic quality about it, even if the first hundred-odd minutes didn’t really justify it. A club that had always viewed its abundant silverware as a mark of global superiority had finally won the title it believed it carried in its DNA, after a twelve-year drought, and a recent period where it had struggled to impose its hegemony domestically. They had also done so against their city rival Atlético, who had lifted the La Liga crown earlier that month.

It was certainly a sweet victory for Ronaldo, played out in a stadium filled with ghosts from the past that had always threatened his ambition to be considered the best player of all time. For this stadium belonged to Benfica, a club that had always resisted the idea of their legendary player Eusébio being surpassed in greatness by the Madeiran upstart, who had entered the international hall of fame after playing for rival Sporting. In 2004, it had also been in the Estádio da Luz that the final of the European Championships was played. The Portuguese national team’s failure to win a match in which Ronaldo played was a national humiliation if ever there was one.

Now, ten years later, Ronaldo had succeeded in expunging the demons, despite being marginal for much of the game because of a lingering hamstring injury.

But, as Atlético coach Diego Simeone remarked later, in these kinds of games no one remembers the loser. Nor do memories endure about the game itself beyond the winning goal, not least when it is scored by Ronaldo, the ultimate narcissist, celebrating his own image.

Real Madrid had shown a consistency as the season had progressed that had been lacking in their rivals, looking increasingly impressive on an upward curve, while Barça had been on a kind of rollercoaster of limited peaks and embarrassing troughs. And while Real Madrid seemed to have found a certain stability and cohesion, not to mention an ethical compass, post-Mourinho under Ancelotti, FC Barcelona seemed to have been hoisted on the petard of its own mythology – that it was more than just a club, destined to be more deserving of support than its historic rival. As well as Rosell’s resignation, the club faced a season-long ban from FIFA for breaching rules on the transfer of underage players; Qatar, FC Barcelona’s main sponsor, become embroiled in fresh allegations about bribes linked to its Word Cup bid; and Messi, along with his father, was investigated for tax evasion. Every way you looked at it, the 2013–14 season ended in failure for FC Barcelona.

‘My Barça was an utter failure. Normally failure means not winning. My view on that is different,’ Martino later told the Spanish football magazine Panenka. ‘If Barça had played their own style but not won the title, it wouldn’t have been a failure. But we didn’t win and we didn’t play well either.’5

Martino believed Barça had fallen into a deep collective depression, a prolonged grieving over the much-loved Tito Vilanova, which had a profoundly demoralizing impact on Messi, the player around whom the team revolved.

But Martino too was held responsible.

He did not shine as a coach, seemingly overwhelmed by the adverse circumstances, while lacking the personality and vision to deal with them. At a critical stage in the season, there was no consensus of opinion as to which of Barça’s various potential line-ups worked best, not least in attack, where star signing Neymar had to fit in with Messi, but had yet to earn the right to claim that he was worth leaving Pedro and Alexis Sánchez on the bench for. What was worse, whatever the scoring statistics said, Messi often seemed strangely peripheral. For a coach who had joked in his first press conference that he was sure Messi and his father had ‘put in a good word for him’, one of his apparent strengths was his undoing.

In May 2014, Martino and Barça announced that they were parting ways after just one season, during which the first team had failed to win any trophies for the first time since 2007–8, and had ended up playing some uncharacteristically listless football, which often seemed to keep Messi on the fringes of games. It was not ideal preparation personally or professionally for Messi, as he sought to lift the World Cup on the continent of his birth.