Lionel Messi and Sergio Ramos are gone, while Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid will fancy their chances of back-to-back titlesZinedine Zidane was the first one out, so early it feels like a lifetime ago. Then Sergio Ramos departed, the full-time whistle finally catching up with him. Now Lionel Messi has gone, flying back into Barcelona to find the contract he had come to sign was no longer there. Arguably the three most significant men in Spanish football over the past decade, along with Cristiano Ronaldo, all gone in a single summer. And Ronaldo had already left three years earlier.This week, Ramos contacted Messi to say he could stay at his place if he liked. There was always respect there – well,...
Even in his moment of greatest sadness there was no recrimination, only departing tears, which Barcelona then repackaged as contentFittingly, it began and ended with a napkin. Lionel Messi’s first Barcelona contract was signed hastily on a restaurant serviette. Now, as he sobbed his way through his farewell press conference, his wife, Antonella, stepped forward from the front row to hand him a tissue. “If the rule you followed brought you to this,” asks Anton Chigurh in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, “of what use was the rule?”Out in the world beyond, Messi’s choking tears were already being repackaged as content. The live stream on Barcelona’s YouTube channel was accompanied by numerous clickable links inviting viewers to purchase...
La Liga’s title race went to the last seconds of the season, as the winning manager had always said it would When at last it was all over Diego Simeone let everyone in on a little secret. With four or five games to go and Atlético Madrid on edge, anxiety gripping and their pursuers closing in, he got together the physios, staff and the people on the gates at the Metropolitano and Cerro del Espino – the first faces the players see every day – and told them to change. Related: Juventus thank their lucky stars as ‘Fatal Verona’ hand them a lifeline | Nicky Bandini pic.twitter.com/WwXXYlzDTcCongrats, @atletienglish ⚪ Atlético are #LaLiga champions for the 11th time, pipping rivals Real...
As Diego Simeone had predicted, it was Luis Suárez who rescued Atlético just as fate looked to inflict another cruel blow“We’re entering into The Suárez Zone,” Diego Simeone said. Atlético Madrid’s manager knew but even he couldn’t have known it would be quite like this, another story of the absurd in a season built on them. If this was The Suárez Zone, which it was, it was The Twilight Zone too, the implausible unfolding in front of them. With 147 seconds left on the penultimate Sunday there was another twist, delirium inside the Metropolitano where they had just witnessed the Uruguayan score the goal that changed everything, and outside where they hadn’t, but went wild anyway. How could they not?...
Chants from Car Park B of the Wanda Metropolitano helped get an agonised Atlético over the line against Real SociedadThe Atlético Madrid fans at the Metropolitano didn’t watch the match that took the club to within touching distance of the league title, but they lived it. Still not allowed in but determined not to be left out, if they couldn’t see their players on Wednesday night their players could hear them, song drifting in through the open southeastern corner of the stadium. Supporters gathered in Car Park B beneath the biggest flagpole in Spain, the 338 square metres of red and white that normally fly from it taken down because of the wind on this night of all nights, while...