Cristiano Ronaldo
found that
Messi's
Barcelona is
no longer that fearsome team that for a decade pushed him to the competitive edge.
Now it is just a team in rags doomed to live badly.
That club ruined by its previous managers, still without a president, and with a locker room full of desolate footballers, is no longer Messi's home, but his prison.
The Portuguese could not feel more fortunate with his two penalty goals.
That's what he came to.
The Argentine could not feel more unhappy with the harsh reality that surrounds him.
His desire for rebellion collides with a wall of mediocrity.
[Narration and statistics (0-3)]
Barcelona was not even able to sustain its first group place.
After having won their first five league games and having conquered Turin, they even served them with a 0-2 to achieve the goal.
He fit three.
Barça is so bad that they even winked at history.
He fell at the Camp Nou after 38 games undefeated.
He did not lose at home since May 2013, when Bayern, who else, also passed him (0-3).
Journalist
Davis Miller
used to explain how much
Muhammad Ali
loved
putting his old matches on television.
Like his insane fight against
Frazier
in Manila, the last one in which the two fighters were in full swing.
Seventeen years had passed and Ali, gobbling vanilla ice cream in a bowl, pointed to himself on the screen spoon in hand: "The best of all time."
There will come a day when Cristiano, when he sees himself running in shorts again, will also feel like an orphan.
Messi already is.
Weather resistance
He could not find a better Christian setting to display his resistance to time.
Barcelona is not there for fanfare or tributes.
Koeman's
team
is unable to hide their bad face.
Quite the opposite.
Chaotic and without structure of play, as deficient in defense as in attack, and without any capacity for construction in a center of the field despised by the disposition of the two pivots, the Catalans were a simple scarecrow nailed in the grass.
Andrea Pirlo
, who has been hearing all this start of the season hearing that he is not yet ready to lead a great team, answered where he should.
He ordered his team to advance lines from the very dawn, turning the departure of the Barça ball into a torment for Barcelona.
Mingueza
rejected
after his mistake in Cádiz, it was Araujo, who had not played for eight games due to injury, who this time accompanied
Lenglet
in the center of the rear.
Pressed both, neither one nor the other offered an exit to the ball, but neither consistency.
In the case of the French central, the drop in his performance is already blushing.
This, however, does not serve to justify the penalty indicated by German referee
Tobias Stieler
when Cristiano tried to overtake Araujo in the area.
The Portuguese did not succeed.
What difference does it make.
The referee, perhaps dazzled by the power of the legend over the rookie, understood that the shock of the shoulders should be enough to signal the maximum penalty.
So Cristiano, who lived his first game at the Camp Nou, wandering from eleven meters when he was still wearing the United shirt, snorted and found the net as he did so many times on that same stage (up to 14 goals in 16 games in Barça territory) .
The blow to the center of the goal did not get a response from
Ter Stegen
.
Far from responding, Barcelona set out to list all their miseries.
Techniques, for which a Koeman who changes parts, but not systems, must take responsibility.
He has not yet been able to overcome a single game, showing his limited ability to correct.
Messi impotence
Pjanic
fired, but didn't create.
De Jong, called in his day to be the metromon of an era, ran from one place to another without knowing what to do.
It is no longer that he does not lead, but that he does not accompany either.
Trincao
and
Pedri
, the extreme theorists, consumed themselves without anyone noticing them.
While
Griezmann
returned to his usual black hole.
Try unchecking that only he can decipher.
And he becomes entangled in the same radius of action of a Messi who could only show impotence despite the fact that he never stopped insisting.
There was no other plan than the one the Argentine could devise.
Either dribble four or five rivals starting from the middle line, or look for Jordi Alba on the wing, or shoot from where he could before
Buffon's
serene wrinkle
.
Only he tried.
Nothing comes out.
Nobody helps him.
Juventus only had to follow his plan to the letter, aware that Barcelona had no other enemy than himself.
In the second Italian goal, the work of
McKennie
, the midfielder finished only in the small area.
Araujo and Lenglet were behind Cristiano.
Even more grotesque was the error of the French central in the third goal.
He put out his hand for a walk like one who feeds pigeons.
The VAR claimed the referee's attention, and Cristiano settled the festival.
Messi must have felt the loneliest footballer in the world.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Ronald Koeman
Pedri
Ter Stegen
Trincão
Jordi Alba
Cristiano Ronaldo
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Champions League
FC Barcelona
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