I know I wouldn’t feel the same about Iker Casillas if he played for a different team—somehow it’s important that he’s a player I love on a team I broadly dislike—but watching him singlehandedly keep Real Madrid in a match like this is almost too much to take. When he smothered the Eto’o penalty I was simultaneously pumping my fist in triumph and shouting in frustration that Barcelona, who had created so many good chances and whom I really wanted to win, still hadn’t broken through. When Messi scored to make it 2-0 I winced, because after the game he’d had Casillas didn’t deserve to concede a meaningless goal in stoppage time, but it was somehow also the wince of being thrilled to see Messi get revenge on a Madrid defense that had hacked him down repeatedly throughout the game.
Anyway. Thierry Henry now spends a good part of every match looking like he’s just walked into a room where no one recognizes him and he’s not sure how offended he ought to be. Juande Ramos looked happy to be speaking Spanish every time he spoke Spanish. It was hard to tell what was a yellow card and what was hope and physics.
It rained a lot, which made everything murkier.
Read More: Barcelona, Real Madrid, The Occasional Match Summary
by Brian Phillips · December 13, 2008
Saw some highlights. Not quite Butcher of Bilbao stuff, and there was something about how Messi rolled around that betrayed an expectation of physical play from Madrid.
I was hoping Real would take it, I will admit. So many injuries, Barca quite simply the best team in Europe. Would have been another great turnover.
Three early challanges from behind (a couple, painful looking Achilles tendon jobs) slowed Messi for the rest of the game. But Madrid had their moments in the first half, it could have gone sour for barca.
“They’ve been making rib-eyes out of his calves all night,” was how Ray Hudson put it.
Richard, it wasn’t so much that the tackles were brutal; it was that the stream of late, not-quite-brutal fouls was just constant. Every time he went near the ball in the first half. It was clearly meant to send a message and keep him from playing his game. He rolled around, but he had a point.
Death by a thousand cuts…does sound plausible. I’m always a bit wary of Barca-as-victim match hermeneutics, but I can’t imagine a Real Madrid with Metzelder and Drenthe would have thought beyond hacking the bejesus out the best player in Europe all evening when it came to tactics.
Any pity I might have felt for Real’s magnificent resilience going without reward went out the window with the first vicious challenge on Messi.
If the referee isn’t going to protect skilled players, then this is what less skilled opponents will resort to. That it’s Real Madrid, the richest, biggest club in Europe, just makes it absurd.