Just when the rolling tide was black and white, when it was Juventus’s players imploring their fans to raise the volume, as if they even needed asking, when the nerves were Barcelona’s and the tension was rising, just moments after Leo Messi appeared to be struggling, the stride slow and the brow heavy, he was up and running again. Others ran with him. There was space now and off Messi went, heading at the defence. He shifted inside and took aim. Gigi Buffon dived to his left and pushed the shot away. And there was Luis Suárez.
Sprinting in behind Patrice Evra, the Uruguayan got to the ball first and sent it back into the net. He kept running, leaping over the advertising board, across the vast space behind the goal where he had scored and over to the fans who were celebrating it, over the gigantic Barcelona shield, arms wide. He kissed his fingers, that familiar celebration, and reached the running track next to the fans, where his team-mates soon joined him.
Messi had made it, Suárez had scored it: the 121st goal scored by Messi, Neymar or Suárez this season, the most effective attacking trio in Spanish football history, and the goal that would give Barcelona their fifth European Cup. The league and Copa del Rey winners now added the European Cup; “perfection”, as Gerard Piqué had put it. As the clock ticked down, they made sure. Neymar made it 122 with the very last kick of the game. The trophy was Barcelona’s. Another one.
For Suárez, the significance was gigantic. For any player it would be but for him, perhaps more so. A season that started with him unable to play, banned for biting Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup, a pariah, booted out of that tournament and unable to join Uruguay in the Copa América too, ended with him scoring in the European Cup final.
It has not always been an easy season; he had scored just one league goal before Christmas, but there is reverence now. Scorer of the winner in the clásico, he has marked this competition: two goals in Manchester, two in Paris, and two assists in Munich, he now scored in Berlin too. When he departed in the dying minutes, the fans chanted his name. He needed this; in a way it is remarkable how long it has taken for him to get it.
Suárez is 28. Holland’s player of the year, England’s player of the year, a Copa América winner with Uruguay and player of the tournament too, but his club career has actually been startlingly modest. A Uruguayan title, the English league cup, a Dutch cup and a Dutch league, clinched six months after he departed, the medal sent to him by post. Now in nine months at Barcelona he has won as much as in nine years in Europe.
This was Barcelona’s second treble in six years. No team in Europe has ever won two trebles before and no team has dominated the decade like them. That is four European Cups in 10 years now; no one else has more than one.
This is a new Barcelona, though. Piqué had insisted on the eve of this game that he hated comparisons and begged people not to constantly play one Barcelona team off against another, as had been done relentlessly this year. That, though, is inevitable and the way this final was won will only add to that. Messi is Messi, and Barcelona will always be Messi’s Barcelona, while Andrés Iniesta was decisive in the opening goal and there was a late appearance for Xavi Hernández, making his 900th professional appearance and his last in Europe.
But it was two new men who scored the crucial goals; two men who symbolise the shift in style. Ivan Rakitic had given Barcelona the lead: the first player other than Messi, Neymar or Suárez to score for Barcelona since the quarter-finals. He did so after three minutes and 24 seconds. Not long but time enough for nine of the 10 outfield players to touch the ball, time enough for Rakitic to bomb into the area and for Iniesta to wait, that pause that sets him apart, like a man whose second hand moves at a different rate to everyone else’s.
Messi’s diagonal ball opened up the space, Jordi Alba sidefooted a volley into the path of Neymar and, although his first touch was a little heavy, he found Iniesta. Iniesta had dashed past Arturo Vidal and could have taken on the shot himself. Instead, he waited. Just a moment, almost imperceptible but impeccable. Then he nudged the ball back with the outside of his foot. Rakitic swept it past Buffon. This was the third final in which Iniesta had provided an assist: in Paris in 2006 it was for Samuel Eto’o; in London in 2011 it was for Messi; here, it was for Rakitic.
“The day I was presented I was already thinking about this game,” Rakitic admitted. He was not talking about this final; he was talking about his return to Sevilla, with whom he had won last season’s Europa League. At the end of the game, a 2-2 draw that momentarily threatened to deny Barcelona the league title, the Croat joined the Sevilla players in applauding the home supporters at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán. They sang his name and held up a huge banner. “This will always be your home. Thank you, Captain,” it said.
The sentiment will be similar in Catalonia now too. Johan Cruyff says that the thing that most struck him when Barcelona won their first European Cup in 1992 was that people stopped him, not to say “well done” but to say “thank you”. Ronald Koeman scored the goal at Wembley; Rakitic had scored it here. The first time is always special, but this will be recalled too. Koeman, Eto’o, Belletti, Pedro, Messi, Villa … Rakitic. But it would take another before they finally got their hands on the trophy, not like at Wembley 23 years ago. Juventus seemed set to deny them but there was Messi and there was Suárez.
