Classic Clasico

“Nessun dorma! Nessun dorma! . . . guardi la stelle che tremano . . .” *

Giacomo Puccini

*(None shall sleep! None shall sleep! . . . watch the stars that tremble. . .)

 

No one could save them now.

Not even Messi.

Not even Guardiola.

Not even the memories of past successes in the clasico.

‘Som I Serem’.  The mosaic as the players walk onto the Camp Nou turf.

‘We are, and we will be.’

On this night, they tried to be. In the end, just like the Prince of Denmark, they couldn’t.

Ping, ping, ping.

Tiki, taka, tiki, taka.

Pass after pass after pass.

El Pulga

“To compare anyone with Lionel Messi is unfair on them.”     

Xavi Hernandez

They call him the greatest player of all time. To quantify that is difficult, especially since if you are a football fan from my generation, that assertion has a huge bias towards it. Bias in the sense that bar Zinedine Zidane or Ronaldinho Gaucho, you have probably never seen the other players to have ever been given the tag ‘greatest player of all time.’ I refer to Pele, Diego Maradona and Johann Cruijff.

But even so, it is not