This weekend Messi did something unusual: he did something he hasn’t done before, exceeding his own expectations
Sunday morning and military machines rolled down the Castellana, armoured vehicles on the move. Snipers stood on roofs and helicopters circled. Something big was happening. “We’ll know how it feels,” Marca said, which they wouldn’t of course, but like everyone else they hoped to find out. And, like everyone else, they were trying. Politicians packed the place, more even than usual, and people arrived from everywhere, papers dedicating dozens of pages. Florentino Pérez left Real Madrid’s match at Huesca early to be there and the best player in the world was due as soon as he’d finished, his club mates too. The third best was there. And so was the fifth.
Leo Messi boarded a plane bound for the Bernabéu, where he’s scored more than any visitor, but he wasn’t playing this time. This was the weekend when Javi Calleja was sacked as Villarreal manager and a last-minute equaliser for Valencia couldn’t stop Mestalla whipping out white hankies; when Betis defender Sidnei went all Maradona, or so they said, and Eibar and Levante went wild; when Cornellá hosted the Catalan derby and Butarque the “southern derby”, Leganés’s mascot presiding over an on-pitch proposal at half-time against Getafe because nothing says romance like a six-foot cucumber. Yet much of that didn’t warrant a word because this was also the weekend when Madrid hosted the derby; one they tried to make their own, although it’s not.
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