Piqué leaves in peace after a comfortable win against Almería

• 2-0 at the Camp Nou Narrative and statistics

• 13th day Classification in First

left

in peace, with the captain's armband, with his tears looking for cracks to come out, and feeling like a leader in a triumph for Barcelona.

Blessed irony for someone who was so happy in the storm.

Goodbye implies admiration and forgiveness, feelings that can only be expressed when there is no turning back.

Perhaps that is why farewells are used to start speaking in the past tense.

It will not be like that with Piqué, that he will not have to look back to recognize himself.

Because he got away with it.

Because he managed to transcend soccer, a game that he knew how to dominate as long as he wanted.

Probably there was nothing more to attend to the child's gaze.

There is no filter purer than that.

and

, stuffed into shirts with the name of his father, looked at him with deep admiration in the darkness of the locker room tunnel before his last game as a footballer at the Camp Nou.

Piqué, starter in his farewell, now only had to close in the best possible way.

's Almería was

a most appropriate team to pay homage to.

There was a reason they arrived at the Camp Nou as the championship team with the least trace as a visitor.

But between that dawn in which the only obsession was for the ball to reach Piqué, and Barça's limited effectiveness in the determining areas, the Almeria were able to get involved in a great way in survival.

Penalty after VAR warning

And that Barcelona could have faced the night at first breath.

, one of the three center backs that Rubi lined up in front of the scaffold, saw how the ball hit his left arm, stretched out more than necessary.

It didn't matter that the defender had his back turned, because the referee, after warning from the VAR and after reviewing it on the monitor, decided that it should be a penalty.

Then one of those surreal moments that color these stories was experienced.

The Camp Nou began insistently demanding that Piqué take the penalty, just as Mascherano did on the day he said goodbye to him.

But Piqué, with good judgment, told Lewandowski that this could not be a festival.

The Pole, however, already grabbed the ball disconcerted.

So much so that he did not know what to do against Fernando, the Almería goalkeeper.

Lewandowski felt the moment eternal.

He ran, stopped, and when his foot reached the ball he still hadn't decided which way to shoot.

He did it without conviction, to the left of him, and the ball went gently towards the post.

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Gerard Piqué.

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Although Barcelona did not pay for the error in terms of the dominance, coherence and speed of their game -and in that, few like

, they did in their way of finishing the actions during the harassment and demolition of the first act to Ferdinand.

All the good that he accomplished in conception was obscured in completion.

The one who best represented this contradictory scenario was

, a hammer for the long-suffering

, but unable to arrive on time for the coronation.

a rare pleasure

Barcelona was piling up chances when

missed a horizontal pass that opened the doors wide to

.

The Belgian then discovered the fear caused by those goalkeepers who, suddenly, are invincible.

's confidence is such

that it didn't even matter that he stayed halfway out.

He just had to wait for Ramazani to melt at the sight of him and throw him where he wanted.

Once Almería understood that nothing good could come of it, the stands were able to dedicate themselves to that rare pleasure of watching

play .

The Frenchman came from nodding with his eyes closed at an empty door.

Ready for redemption, Dembélé returned to the charge after the break with the memorable episode of the opening goal.

Located by

from overseas, the winger drove

,

and

crazy before settling with a sweet strike that the goalkeeper could no longer oppose.

Dembélé got entangled again afterwards, but after the sentence offered by De Jong, nothing mattered anymore.

The focus, in minute 84, returned where it should.

ordered

to get ready to go out.

And Piqué was naked before the emotion that invaded him.

Because playing, even if he doesn't believe it, is also living.

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• football

• FC Barcelona

• Gerard Piqué

• UD Almeria

• Xavi Hernandez

• Ousmane Dembele

• Frankie de Jong

• Sergio Busquets

• Jordi Alba