I admit, it's a long article, but written with wit and style, enjoy this one with your free time "Barcelona's executioners: Sadistic, devastating, and football at its finest"
Zito Madu pays tribute to the way Barcelona turned on the style in their crushing win over Celta Vigo on Sunday.
Few things in football are as exciting and terrifying as watching Luis Enrique's Barcelona at their best. The fascination is not just only because the team is a collection of world-class players who work and move as parts of one all-conquering machine, but it's due to the ease of which they do away with their opponents.
Watching them treat Bayern Munich as if they were a lowly mid-table team in the Champions League last year exemplified that horror. If we know that Bayern are one of the top teams in the world, with one of the game's greatest managers, what does it mean to watch Barcelona treat the first leg as if it were a mere training exercise?
And it's not just Bayern, they've done it to Real Madrid, Roma, Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid and Juventus as well. And they do it with the chilling horror of an executioner trying to have to make small-talk - even joking about nonsensical things - with you as he lines up and beheads his victims. You start to wonder if he knows the magnitude of his actions, or worse, if he's so used to it that he barely considers it beyond going through the motions to make it to the end of the work-day.
Look at how joyous the Barcelona goal celebrations are, and then look at the hopelessness and despair that is visible on the opposing players' faces as the score inevitably runs up. At certain points, you almost want to look away. It's almost sadistic.
With the score at 1-1 after the half, you could pity Celta Vigo for believing that they could be spared. After all, they had beaten this Barcelona team 4-1 back in September of 2015. They not only cheated Death, they ran off taunting and mocking the slayer after mortally him.
The problem with that, of course, is that they would have to see him again; and this time he'd had time to consider the scar, to build resentment and to plan a specific fate for Vigo that went beyond the nonchalant beheading given to the others who come across his path. This one had to be special because the opponent was special.
And to be fair to Celta, they were dogged in the fight. They harassed Barca. They pressed, attacked in numbers, absorbed attacks and defended stoutly enough that 55 minutes in, there was a tense atmosphere in the stadium that suggested that this was one of the few who would encounter the reaper and walk away unscathed. That it is possible to walk into Camp Nou, against Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez, and with faith, strength and teamwork, one could survive.
That hope was challenged when Messi went on a trademark run from the right flank, cutting in past a couple of defenders before teeing up Andres Iniesta for a shot at goal. The keeper stopped it but at that point the garrotter was done sharpening his bland, and the harsh truth was revealed that he had only been toying with Celta this entire time.
The first hack at the body was done by Pique passing a ball from the back, all the way up to Suarez in the right channel. The Uruguayan kept possession under pressure from two defenders, turned clockwise to face the center of the pitch and passed it to Messi. Messi touched it once to control, another to bring it in front of him, and because Suarez had been making a run through the cluster of defenders mesmerized by the fear of Messi with the ball, the third touch was a scooped pass over their dull and glazed eyes.
Suarez watched the pass go over his left shoulder, slide off his chest and land on his foot. One touch with his right boot and it's a goal. 2-1. One of the Celta players blasted the ball into the net again in anger. Suarez ran off smiling and pointing at Messi to thank him for the pass.
Celta then had three quick successive chances after that. The last few electric impulses from the body to claim its right to live.
But if you're given those opportunities against a team like Barcelona, it's irresponsible not to go after them with bare teeth.
What then happens is another elegant incision. This time, Messi again --who else-- driving toward the box from the right --surprise, surprise!-- before slipping the ball into the path of Neymar who is darting into the box. Neymar finds himself alone, but with no time, against an onrushing keeper. No issue, space and time are arbitrary concepts to begin with, he pulls the ball across his body with his right foot before sending it across goal with his left. Suarez pounces on it to score the third.
Now the executioner is in full-form. For the first time in a long time, he's enjoying himself. This isn’t nonchalance, it's a mindful dismembering. It's Neymar pulling out a rainbow over a defender for no other reason but because he can.
The fourth is the most definite proof of this. After winning a penalty by turning a defender into a tourist whose MAPS application malfunctions at a critical juncture, leaving him with no option but to lash out at the ridiculous world, Messi stepped up to the spot. He runs up, and rolls the ball across to his right rather than striking it forward. Neymar would say after the game that it was intended for him but Suarez is first to the "pass" to bury it in for his third goal. Training ground stuff.
A ode to Johan Cruyff's legendary technique with Ajax in 1982 against Helmond Sport.
[The story of the two-man penalty]
Celta has now been paid back in the most embarrassing fashion for their earlier transgression. There's of course those who don't agree with the nature of the win from Barcelona and especially that last penalty: that it was classless and just adding insult to injury. Those with these opinions are almost certainly planted in their opinions against the team so any argument against the belief would fall on deaf ears. It's futile really.
Yet, it has to be said that it was fun as hell. It was like the executioner twirling his blade in the air and catching it behind his back, and you're so impressed with the trick that you forget that there's an opponent still laying there. This is watching football at its finest, with the curators openly enjoying themselves, a quality that we champion and pine for when the opposite is true. Moralizing against the techniques used to win in a sport is an asinine engagement. The penalty is no different from a backheel assist, a rabona, a rainbow, an audacious chip when a simple shot would do. If you can pull it off and you're ambitious enough to try, so whatever you want.
The respectability politics and "unwritten" rules only apply to physically injured opponents, the only one in charge of sparing their pride is the players on the field with the ability to stop that penalty had they sprinted into the box after that pass.
Anyways, Ivan Rakitic scored as well. And Celta were added to the gallery of mutilation for Barcelona, who smiled the whole way through the match while the Celta players were dealing with the frustration of being stuck in an unyielding reality and knowing they had neither the ability, resolve, fitness or luck to change anything. All they could do was to restart the match again and wait for another goal to be conceded.
Which they did, when Neymar scored his first and the sixth on a counterattack. Messi received the ball in the center and passed it to Suarez on the right. The forward looks up and sees the Brazilian sprinting down the left with only one defender close to him before sending a cross-field pass to him. It goes over the pitiful defender, Neymar controls it with his first touch and chips it over the keeper with his second. Both left-footed.
Three of the Celta players who were racing back loiter around the six-yard box after the goal while the Barcelona players celebrate. Defeated. Each with his head down. Unable to even muster up any anger or frustration.
The body is cold. The job is done.
Zito Madu
Eurosport - Zito Madu - 2/15/16, 5:48 PM