A tribute to Messi’s 2017 El Clasico winner – the goal of a true hard man

Every day, thousands upon thousands of words are written and spoken about Lionel Messi. In newspapers, on websites, on radio stations and television.
If potential, we would listen to and read them all. No other football player, possibly, has always done indeed a lot to deserve such buttery adulation ; reached such stratospheric levels, performed such abnormal, inexplicable feats with jai alai and proto-indo european .
But in among all the praise, all the futile attempts to pay protection to his ace with ink and hot air, none of which will ever be sufficient, there is a aspect of the little Argentine ’ s being that is discussed less frequently than it should be : Messi, for all of his ability and proficiency and news and dexterity, is hard as nails.

not in the theatrical performance hard man way of English football of years gone by. He ’ s not Razor Ruddock, julian Dicks or Vinnie Jones, is he ?
But Messi is rugged, hardy, robust, resilient. Tough as a match of old boots .
He has been fouled literally thousands of times. But no topic how much he ’ sulfur knocked down, he is back up again, like one of those round-bottomed wooden toys, expression unaltered, eyebrow unfurrowed, charming boots still dancing to his own interplanetary beat .
As one of his opponents told The defender : “ [ Messi ’ s ] incredibly solid, extremely fast. You can ’ thymine knock him over : you hit him hard and you don ’ thyroxine put him off his stride. physically he is brutal. ”
Silent, elegant, but brutal .
And if we are to discuss Messi ’ s brutality and fortitude and overcharge, then there is one game and one goal that encapsulates it better than any early : El Clasico, April 2017, the 90th hour plus a little on top .
El Clasico is never without its tension and challenges, of class, but this one was edgier than most .
Barcelona were in a night locate. not adenine bad as the ones they have come to know since, but a crisis by the standards of the former decade .
• • • •

READ: ‘We’re the best, f*ck you’: The story of Barca & Real’s four Clasicos in 18 days
• • • •
After a succeed at Sevilla in early April, they had been in control of the title rush and looking forward to a Champions League quarter-final with Juventus with the momentum of La Remontada behind them .
Two weeks later, they had been beaten 3-0 in Turin, drawn 0-0 with Juve in the fall leg, and lost 2-0 at Malaga in La Liga, ceding operate of the race to Real Madrid once more .
It was Luis Enrique ’ s last season, and it looked like a atrocious end to a brilliant spell in charge. With real Madrid future improving at the Bernabeu, things could get worse. A Madrid acquire and they would be six points ahead, the title out of sight for the Catalans .
Messi was going into the game looking adenine beleaguered as his team, besides. After a firm challenge from Dani Alves in the restitution leg of the Juventus tie, he had a shiner around his leave eye, a physical admonisher of the italian side ’ s smasher shove off .
But the rhetoric was defiant. “ What we have to do there is what we have done earlier, ” Andres Iniesta said. What Messi had done earlier is probably more accurate. This was to be La Pulga ’ s 34th Clasico. In the former 33, he ’ five hundred scored 20 and set up 13 more .
But Madrid had a design to stop him, one they made very obvious very early on. Inside the opening 20 minutes, Messi had been on the receiving end of a angry scissor challenge from behind from Casemiro and an elbow – well disguised, but on second viewing quite credibly careful – from Marcelo .
As a result, he had added a bloody mouth to his black center and started to look more like a boxer trudging through the 12th round of a gruelling fight than the twinkle-toed football player that we are so secondhand to viewing .

seven minutes late, Real Madrid took the lead through Casemiro, a scrappy goal from close range in the second phase after a corner.

Read more: Swansea City A.F.C.

But remember what we said about Messi bouncing up like one of those wooden toys ? It wouldn ’ t take long .
physically, he had a nibble of weave between his teeth, soaking up the blood. metaphorically, the bit was there .
He dropped deep and to the leave, picked up the ball, played it to Sergio Busquets, who passed it on to Ivan Rakitic. Rakitic returned it to Messi, who skipped past Luka Modric, then Dani Carvajal and slotted the ball gently but perfectly past a helpless Keylor Navas. One each .
The game became raving mad, throughout. Both ‘ keeper were forced into multiple saves. Both Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo missed chances that, for them, were sitters .
then, finally, the breakthrough for Barca. Seventy-two minutes in, Rakitic shifted the ball from correctly foot to left and rifled it into the crown corner. seventy-six minutes in, Sergio Ramos went in bipedal and at full pour on Messi and was shown a crimson .
Messi was floored once more, but surely the game was done. only a quarter of an hour to go, a goal and a man to the good .
You ’ five hundred think. But this is El Clasico. Somehow, Real Madrid rallied. Marcelo crossed, James Rodriguez – the anti-Messi in a feel, a serviceman adenine brittle as a biscuit – met it at the cheeseparing post and Los Blancos were grade .
“ A awful blow, ” Luis Enrique late called it. And it about got worse. Madrid pressed for the winner, hoping for an improbable victory to all but seal the title .
then, with 33 seconds left on the clock, Barcelona won throw-in in their own one-half. It looked innocent. But Madrid, in their craze, had lost form and solidity .
A promptly exchange of passes freed Sergi Roberto, who burst forwards and didn ’ metric ton stop. Past Modric, past Marcelo, over the halfway line. then to Andre Gomes, who touched it back to Jordi Alba, who played it into space on the edge of the area. That quad. You know it and, more to the point, you know who occupies it .

Messi had glided across unnoticed, pathless. A swish of that charming left boot and the ball was in the back of the net .
Messi whipped off his shirt, ran to the seething mass of white-shirted fans behind the finish and held it up, name and number turned towards the stands – the most iconic of his hundreds of celebrations .
‘ You can bloody me, you can bruise me, you can try to break my peg – but you can ’ thyroxine stop me ’, the gesture screamed. It was an picture that said more than those many thousands of words written about Messi. An image that will abide .
Silent, elegant, but brutal .
The goal, as it turns out, did not matter much in the thousand dodge. Though Barcelona went top temporarily, Madrid had a game in handwriting, which they won, starting a footrace of six back-to-back league victories that ended with Zinedine Zidane ’ s first La Liga peak as a director .
still, it is a goal that is worth recalling and examining. not alone for its drama or its beauty, but for the way it sums up Messi ’ s most underestimate quality .
By Joshua Law
Where are they now? The Barcelona B XI from Messi’s last game in 2005

Read more: Swansea City A.F.C.

A tribute to Barcelona-era Ronaldo and his *other* hat-trick v Valencia
Seven former Barcelona players we can’t believe are still playing in 2021
Can you name Barcelona’s top scorers in La Liga since 2000?