■ Real Madrid v Barcelona, 10.45pm UAE time on Sunday, BeIN Sports
Andres Iniesta’s most recent match at the Bernabeu left him with a memory he will savour forever.
“It’s a rare thing when you’re leaving the pitch at an away stadium and the opposition fans are applauding you,” Iniesta said earlier this season.
Then he smiled. “It happened to me last time at Real Madrid.” Yes, at Real Madrid. That’s a rarity indeed for a career barcelonista.
That day, Iniesta had provided an exhibition of ... well, of pure Iniesta: Creative, constructive, darting here and there, with that uncanny sixth sense of how to be always in the right position, choosing the best possible pass.
And he did something else that hasn’t always been instinctively Iniesta. He walloped home a goal, struck from distance, with startling power.
It was Barcelona’s third of the game. By the time he was withdrawn by manager Luis Enrique to a standing ovation from many of the fans wearing white jerseys and Madrid scarves, Barcelona had scored their fourth. Madrid had been overwhelmed.
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That was only last season, although, viewed through the lens of recent weeks, and the build-up to Sunday’s showdown in Madrid between Spanish football’s Big Two, it can seem like an age ago.
Barcelona were European champions then, a few weeks shy of becoming World Club Champions, and holders of Spain’s major pair of domestic prizes.
The 4-0 away rout of their rivals left Madrid, naturally, in crisis. Rafa Benitez was fired as Madrid manager a few weeks later.
Less than 18 months on, Zinedine Zidane, elevated from the feeder team, Castilla, to succeed Benitez, eyes the prospect of guiding Madrid to their first European Cup, a trophy they hold, and Primera Liga double since 1958.
If Zidane will not say so, for fear of tempting fate, the second half of that pair of titles will look considerably closer if his team can increase a lead at the top of the table that currently stands at three points, with a game in hand, over second-placed Barca.
As Barcelona captain, Iniesta is obliged on Sunday to lift a mood of creeping gloom. He approaches the 35th clasico of his career having known worse circumstances in the see-sawing relationship between Barca and Madrid, but the sense of drift around his club is pronounced.
His own future, and the renewal of a contract that runs out next year, has been the subject of speculation in the last few days, although it is, as Enrique insisted last week, “ridiculous to think anybody could replace Iniesta”.
Talks about his next contract have merely be been parked until the end of the campaign, Iniesta, who turns 33 next month, says to reassure anxious fans.
That campaign will finish earlier than Iniesta or his colleagues had hoped. Barcelona will not be in June’s Uefa Champions League final in Cardiff, following elimination by Juventus in midweek, a 3-0 aggregate defeat through which the Primera Liga’s highest-scoring team looked unusually blunt in front of goal.
Barca’s strike-force should be their forte, and the club’s executives were on Friday pursuing various avenues of appeal to try to take maximum firepower to Madrid, arguing for an unlikely 11th hour reduction in the three-match suspension of Neymar that would make the Brazilian striker available for the fixture.
What Enrique knows for certain is this clasico will be his last as Barcelona manager. He announced in February he would depart at the end of his third season in charge, and if a rousing comeback, from 4-0 down in the club’s last-16 Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain suggested he might say goodbye in a blaze of glory, those hopes have steadily declined.
Barcelona do have a Copa del Rey final, where they will be favourites against Alaves, ahead of them, but feel they must take three points from the Spanish capital on Sunday to maintain the defence of their league title.
Iniesta was pleased that, as Barca were defied by Juventus at Camp Nou on Wednesday night, their supporters roared them on throughout a goalless second leg. “They were our 12th man,” remarked the captain.
The fans’ appreciation of a Barcelona that has supplied an unprecedented stack of silverware and of joy in the last decade, may not have been as startling as the applause Iniesta heard in Madrid 17 months ago, but it was still gratifying.
Player of the week - Gelson Martins (Sporting Lisbon)
There may be no finer nursery for great wingers than Sporting Lisbon, where two of this century’s Ballon D’Or winners, Luis Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo learned their craft and the Euro 2016 winners Ricardo Quaresma and Nani both emerged. Gelson Martins may be the next in the illustrious line.
Benfica’s loss
Martins goes into Saturday’s Lisbon derby hoping to give Benfica, the league-leaders, cause to once again regret they were not sharp-eyed enough to keep him on the red side of the city. At the beginning of his teenage years, he was attending practice at Benfica’s youth headquarters. Sporting offered him an alternative, and, at their admired academy, he thrived, rising through the B team to earn his first professional contract three years ago.
Rising price
There have been two further contracts since, the latest signed in February, which runs until 2022 and includes a buyout clause of a whopping €60 million (Dh235.8m), acknowledgement of the growing market interest in a player who turns 22 next month. Martins insists he will not leave Sporting until he has won a title there. That is not on the cards this year, with the club third in the table, behind Benfica and Porto.
Marcelo’s nemesis
Martins’s showings in the group phase of this season’s Uefa Champions League alerted clubs outside Portugal to his big-game temperament. The skills were already well known, and indeed Real Madrid had tried to entice him to their academy three seasons ago. When he came with Sporting to Madrid’s Bernabeu stadium in the Champions League last September, he gave Madrid’s Marcelo, in particular, a severe test in what was a narrow 2-1 Madrid win.
Portfolio of tricks
Martins has a startling burst of speed among his assets, and a medley of manoeuvres to put uncertainty in the minds of his markers. Get too tight on him and he has a well-practised pirouette turn away from a challenge. A firm shot and a willingness to strike for goal from unlikely angles and distances are part of the package.
Island life
Martins was born in Cape Verde, the archipelago of islands once colonised by Portugal off the west coast of Africa. He has described sharpening his skills on stony, hard ground there as a child. At the age of eight, he moved with his parents to Portugal.
In Nani’s footsteps
He used to study the moves of Robinho, the deft dribbler of Brazil and Real Madrid, and among his youthful idols was Nani, once of Manchester United, who shares his Cape Verdean heritage, and the Sporting apprenticeship. They are now fellow Portugal internationals, Martins having won his first cap for the reigning European champions last October.
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