23/04/2022
The clock read 91.33. Roberto surged past Luka Modric, who lurched at him, leg out, then accelerated beyond Marcelo. “Bloody foul him!” Cristiano Ronaldo would shout, despair scrawled across his face.
But that wasn’t so easy and, he said, he couldn’t know it would end like this. There were 24 seconds left when Barça’s right‑back went by and still a long way to go. Sergi Roberto raced into it: 10 metres, 20, 30. “I don’t know how I did it; I was dead,” he admitted. He passed to André Gomes, who paused. Nineteen seconds left.
Gomes soon got what he was waiting for: Jordi Alba zooming up the line again, legs whirring, head back. Seventeen seconds left.
Everyone bombed into the area, towards goal. Well, almost everyone.
From the other side, Messi saw something and arched across into the gap behind the gathering crowd. Alba took another touch and, 15 seconds left, pulled back. Seeing Messi coming, Sergi Roberto ran out the way.
Fourteen seconds to go. Messi guided it first time through them. Nacho, blocked by Luis Suárez, saw it flash past on one side. Toni Kroos, stretching, saw it flash past on the other. Navas could not reach it.
The clock read 91.47, and 91.53 by the time Messi was there holding his shirt before the stands, an entire Bernabeu stunned in their wake.
“Messi has the last laugh,” ran Marca’s headline – but he was not laughing. He stood motionless, staring ahead.
“Remember my name,” ran the headline on the front of L’Esportiu, like they could forget it.
There was something about the image: Messi silently showing them his shirt. One photo caught the exact moment he let go and raised his right hand; the shirt seems to float as if by magic. If there was something in that, there was more in the look. Defiant, he had decided it.
A black eye, a bleeding mouth and the Barcelona shirt in his hands. No seconds left. With an Entire Bernabeu stunned in their wake, the los bancos frustrated and furious, kneeling on the pitch.
📅On This Day in 2017, Lionel