Raising the Bar

ALMOST exactly an hour after the final whistle, Barcelona posted a tweet: “Congratulations to @ realmadrid for winning the 2017/18 Champions League title.”

Underneath some fans demanded the message be deleted immediately while others claimed it as a classy touch. “We are rivals, not enemies”, one wrote.

Meanwhile, Barcelona’s key players – Lionel Messi, Gerard Pique, Luis Suarez, Andres Iniesta – stayed quiet. Some had recently posted pictures of themselves surrounded by their families, with the World Cup just around the corner.

But from the words that have been spoken since, and despite the club’s stately message, it is clear Madrid’s triumph hit home. Barcelona had failed and this made it even harder to bear.

“Obviously it’s infuriating (for us),” Suarez said in an interview with RAC1 earlier this month. “Madrid have won the Champions League in each of the last three years. They have made history and it’s a thorn in our side.”

Chiefly, perhaps, because Barca will feel they were better than Madrid last season.

They blew them away in a 3-0 flurry at the Santiago Bernabeu and then played with 10 men for the second half at the Nou Camp and still drew 2-2. They even led with a man fewer until Gareth Bale’s late equaliser.

They also finished an enormous 17 points clear of them to win La Liga, a gap that admittedly swelled when Zinedine Zidane began prioritising games in Europe, but even by February, before the Champions League knockouts kicked into gear, Barcelona were 16 ahead.

While Madrid’s victory over Liverpool was a final blow, it was the defeat to Roma, and the manner of it, that was the moment of realisation.

Throwing away a 4-1 lead by losing 3-0 in Italy was not perceived as just careless, it was unforgivable.

“We have to endure the pain,” said coach Ernesto Valverde. “There will be some tough days.”

Ahead of their Group B opener at home to PSV tomorrow (12:55am Malaysian time), Sergio Busquets and Philippe Coutinho started as substitutes in Saturday’s win over Real Sociedad, even if both were needed before the end.

Messi, who turned 31 in June, may also need to be preserved if he is to add a fifth Champions League success to his collection. Now captain, he appears hungrier than ever.

“It’s time to win the Champions League,” Messi told Catalunya Radio earlier this month. “We’ve been knocked out in the quarterfinals three seasons in a row and maybe the last one was the worst of all because of the result and how the match was played.

“I think we have to aim for that, as a club, as a team and as a collective. We have a spectacular squad and we can do it.” – AFP