Real glory in Europe so painful for Barca
BUT IT’S NOT ENOUGH VALVERDE’S MEN WON TITLE,
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 Camp Nou 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.
A pattern has emerged in recent years that both clubs are keen to break. Barcelona dominate domestically, while Real Madrid reign in Europe.
Barca have won seven out of the last 10 league titles, Madrid only two. Real have claimed four of the last five Champions League crowns, Barcelona the other one.
But 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.
“Without personality, without Messi and without any fight, Barca were shipwrecked at the Olimpico against an immensely superior team that lowered the Barca players from their artificial pedestal,” read Madrid’s daily newspaper AS the following morning. –