That was some win for Barca at the weekend. Delighted for Graham Hunter in particular who said two weeks ago on Newstalk that Aguero is arguably better than Messi. Fool. As good as Aguero is, Messi is untouchable at the moment.
Good article from Sid Lowe this week as usual - well it’s a good start anyway, haven’t managed to read the whole thing yet.
Barcelona leave Coupet standing as Atltico implode
A 6-1 humiliation at the Camp Nou suggests that Atltico’s supposed title challenge is a sham
The smooth, handsome Frenchman lounged lazily against a post, emanating a cool air and watching the world pass him by, shrugging nonchalantly and barely flinching as it did. Chaos surrounded him but he stood silently, accompanied by the most profound of thoughts, a gaze of serene resignation on his face, hands resting gently on his hips. You almost expected him to draw philosophically from a Gitanes and pull up his collar as the mist swirled off the Seine.
Only Grgory Coupet wasn’t wearing a collar: he was wearing the luminous jersey of the Atltico Madrid goalkeeper and he stood a thousand kilometres from the Left Bank, 75,000 people looking down upon him first in expectation and then in giggling joy as 10 men in red and white protested and 10 men in red and blue embraced. It wasn’t just that the world had passed him by, drifting easily out of reach; it was that the ball had too. That the game had done the same and that the season could follow; that the thoughts going through Coupet’s mind were brooding ones — shared by atlticos everywhere.
FC Barcelona versus Atltico Madrid at the Camp Nou. It was the event they’d been building up for seven days and it had barely lasted seven minutes. It was, they said, a contest between two classic clubs, serious contenders for the title; between Leo Messi and Sergio Aguero to find the world’s best footballer. But, like the last time the two Argentine pibes met at the top of the Camp Nou bill — the two New Maradonas, successor and son-in-law, Olympic room-mates and PlayStation rivals — it was no contest.
Not so much because Messi destroyed Aguero, although he was breathtakingly brilliant, but because Bara destroyed Atltico. Because Atltico destroyed themselves.
The match was just eight minutes old when Barcelona won a free-kick on the edge of the Atltico area. Messi and Xavi Hernndez stood over it. So did Ral Garca. Coupet was leaning against his post when Messi casually curled the ball over a wall so badly constructed you’d think gelatinous genius Jess Gil had come back from the dead with some bogus planning permission tucked under his arm, sending it bouncing softly into the net. While Coupet stood motionless, Atltico’s outfield players surrounded the referee but to no avail: replays showed Messi being told he could take it and the only resistance Garca offered was to spit at the ball. Because that’ll stop it.
“It was all over right there,” sighed Atlti coach Javier Aguirre. Which might sound like an exaggeration with 84 minutes still remaining and Atlti captain Maxi Rodrguez taking just five of them to score. But it wasn’t. Because Messi’s goal wasn’t Barcelona’s first, it was their third, and two more would follow in 20 minutes, three more overall, as Bara scored six for the second time in four La Liga matches and the second time in four matches with Atltico.
Samuel Eto’o got two, Rafa Mrquez and Eidur Gudjohnsen scored one each and Thierry Henry rounded it off brilliantly, but it didn’t end there: Andrs Iniesta hit the post twice and Messi almost got the goal of the season.
“Ooooh!” ran the cover of El Mundo Deportivo, below an advert for their current cul collection — Bara knives. AS called it “orgasmic”, Sport insisted it was “a game to frame” and La Vanguardia obeyed, declaring Barcelona’s performance “monumental, a work of art, an oil painting”. “No one will forget,” they said, “such an exhibition of goals, of beauty and ambition. It was a game to remember, to analyse, to fall in love with.”
Not for Atltico, it wasn’t. And as for the analysis, if it’s hard to judge how good Barcelona really were having been given such a flying start, it’s easier to judge how bad Atltico were: very, very bad. Barcelona’s first three were gifts, coming during what one columnist described as “the most idiotic eight minutes in history”. And no matter how much president Enrique Cerezo dismissed the result as “illogical” and “an accident”, no matter how much he had a point, some fear Atltico have been found out; that the side that looked like genuine contenders aren’t.
After all, they’ve already lost three, are seven points off the top, and have come unstuck just as the key games begin: 1-0 losers against Sevilla, 6-1 losers against Barcelona, Real Madrid are up next and then it’s Villarreal. Two defeats and they could be 13 points off the pace.
Worryingly for Atlti, against Barcelona it was the players who are supposed to be good who were particularly bad. The normally reliable Ral Garca turned his back on Messi’s free kick, new signing Paulo Assunao is supposed to boss the midfield but was utterly irrelevant and new centre-back Tomas Ujfalusi announced it was good to be scary but this time only frightened his own fans, losing his man on the opening goal and conceding a dumb penalty for the second. Javier Aguirre’s policy of rotating his goalies, lauded in the week, no longer looks so bright either — especially with the side struggling on set-plays.
Worse still, Saturday night seemed to confirm that Atlti simply can’t afford to suffer injuries — especially not now. Missing Diego Forln, Giourkas Seitaridis, Maniche and Simao Sabrosa, their 21-man squad can’t cope. Most people had never heard of the players on the bench on Saturday night. They don’t have a single right-back, a decent defensive midfielder, a creative midfielder or a genuine left-winger.
They do have a replacement for Forln in Florent Sinama-Pongolle but it’s not the same. Now Maxi is struggling too and Aguero is hobbling from game to game, fending off groin and ankle injuries, on the verge of a breakdown. Besides, by the time El Kun first touched the ball in open play on Saturday night he’d already had three touches from dead balls. Kick-offs, to be precise. And when that happens, even he hasn’t got a hope in hell of matching Messi. Or beating Barcelona.
