With 25 minutes to play between Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, Spain's best two sides so far this season, the sun dipped behind the mountain of Tibidabo, casting long shadows across the planet's largest football crowd so far this season.
Diego Godin, Atletico’s warrior-like defender who embodies so much of the fight, spirit, cunning and wiliness of Diego Simeone’s charges, had just received a second yellow card and was taking an age to leave the field. The watching 94,990 finally had time to pause for thought after a so far frenetic encounter.
Had he been a Real Madrid player, Godin would have been booed, but Barca’s enmity towards Madrid’s other giants is not as acute and fans knew the Uruguayan’s departure meant almost certain victory for their team.
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Atletico were 2-1 down and reduced to nine men. Without Godin, the man who equalised at Camp Nou on the final day of the 2013/14 season to snatch a draw and the league title at Barca’s expense, they would be seriously depleted following an earlier dismissal when fellow defender Filipe Luis put his studs into Lionel Messi’s knee – a disgraceful challenge which sent Luis Enrique, standing close by, into a state of animated rage.
“You saw my reaction, that says it all, I was worried,” the otherwise satisfied Barca manager said.
The defender would watch the rest of the game from the pressroom. His dismissal came a minute before the end of a first half which Atletico had dominated for the first 25 minutes.
Level on points with Barca before play – though having played a game more – Simeone’s side started brilliantly, outplaying the best team in the world on their own turf and taking the lead after nine minutes.
Koke’s goal, expertly taken from a Saul Niguez cross, had been coming. Niguez and Yannick Carrasco also had efforts before Barca managed a shot on target.
The Catalans were charged with coming from behind against a team who had conceded only eight goals in their 21 league games, by a distance the best defence in Spain. Atletico also boasted the best away record, with eight wins from 11.
Barca were up for the challenge. They are the best team in the world for a reason and when Messi equalised after half an hour there was only one team on top.
Atleti are renowned for defensive parsimony and the goal was the first they had conceded in 483 minutes, but it was Messi’s 21st league goal in 20 matches against Atleti.
The home team made it two eight minutes later when Luis Suarez held off a challenge from compatriot Jose Maria Gimenez to strike a long ball which had been played forward from Daniel Alves.
Of all his attributes, Suarez’s strength is his most underrated. It was only the second time that Atleti had conceded more than one league goal all season, the first back in September when Barca visited the Calderon.
Despite the two dismissals, there would be no further goals and Atletico had the best chance to score in the second period with Antoine Griezmann’s close range effort blocked by Claudio Bravo.
Such margins decide titles, but despite Atletico’s undoubted power and progress it was their sixth successive defeat to Barca. Simeone gets the maximum from his players, yet he also loses his best talents – including Arda Turan – to Barcelona.
Atletico had enough to blunt Barca, to give them a shock and reduce them to only four efforts on target. They just did not have enough to stop them winning. Who does?
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