Off The Bar: Pirlo’s tears, Warner's paper shredder, Vidal’s horror hair

Ben Davies - Football Columnist 15:28 08/06/2015
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    • Football found solace in the Champions League final.

    After two weeks of football being dragged into a moral abyss courtesy of FIFA’s rather alternative approach to organising their financial filing cabinet, it finally found escapism on Saturday courtesy of a truly remarkable achievement — Thomas ‘one Barca appearance’ Vermaelen becoming a Treble-winner…oh, and Barcelona becoming European champions!

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    BARCELONA OUT OF THIS WORLD

    ‘European champions’ almost doesn’t do justice to the awe-inspiring superiority of Barcelona over mere Earth-dwelling mortals. The ‘Universe Champions League winners’ seems a more fitting title for the Treble-winning Catalonians.  It’s hard to see who else in this solar system and beyond can challenge them for that title – Star Wars Stormtroopers have strong discipline but lack individual flair, while E.T.’s extended family are highly intelligent but lack presence at set-pieces.

    Indeed, it’s entirely plausible that Barca are aliens themselves. Off The Bar doesn’t have access to Barcelona’s medical records but we wouldn’t be surprised if their charts showed they all had five hearts, the power of telepathy and the ability to foresee exactly what is going to happen next. Dani Alves in fact recently said that ‘Xavi plays in the future’ so this all checks out.

    As for the more Earthly Juve, they will surely find some consolation in the fact they delivered a very impressive battling display. No doubt, they will be thankful that they didn’t leak four goals like they did to fellow European giants Fulham back in the Europa League in 2010. We guess that was one key lesson of the night: while Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez are an absolute handful, Bobby Zamora, Zoltan Gera and Dickson Etuhu have the potential to pose an even more potent attacking threat.

    PRE-MATCH CONTESTS
    Even before the opening octave of the Champions League theme was cannoned out, both teams engaged in a best-of-three pre-match battle that ultimately defined the result.

    ROUND 1: FASHION

    Barcelona’s squad landed in Berlin wearing double denim – yes, seriously. This was a flagrant breach of a decade-old UN resolution that globally outlawed the fashion crime.  Beyond Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann playing with a broken neck in the 1956 FA Cup Final, this was the bravest act witnessed in footballing history. In contrast, Juventus rocked up to the Berlin capital looking super suave— they had the honour of wearing the finest garments Italian suit-making had to offer, or rather the suit had the honour of wearing the finest man the human race has to offer — deep-lying midfield Adonis, Andrea Pirlo. 1-0 Juve.

    ROUND 2: HAIRCUTS

    Lionel Messi has always lacked one key quality: a footballer haircut. After endless years of sporting lank floppy hair, the little Argentine arrived in Munich with an archetypal football trim – super tight shave on the sides and sculpted flicked up hair on top. After a long wait, we can now truly regard Messi as ‘the complete’ footballer. As for the Old Lady? Step forward – or rather step backward and stick on a bobble hat – Arturo Vidal. The midfielder came to the final sporting a scalp that seemed to feature a stegosaurus sleeping on a zebra-crossing. A follicle apocalypse. It’s the most powerful of all ironies that the midfielder shares a name with a pioneer of beautiful hairdressing, Vidal Sassoon. Like any good team, there will be a post-mortem to decide what went wrong for Juve in Berlin — at the very top will have to be Vidal’s despicable lid. Juve 1-1 Barca.

    ROUND 3: ESCALATOR USE
    The Olympiastadion has no doubt witnessed some incredibly historic events but the construction of a changing room-to-pitch escalator must now sit at the very top. Juve right-back Stephan Lichtsteiner gave the revolution a whirl, coolly cruising down the escalator, hand on hip – surely a shopping mall viral hit waiting to happen.  On Barcelona’s side, Dani Alves literally threw himself head first into the escalator, contorting his body across the rails and stretching his limbs to near breaking point a la Mel Gibson in the eye-watering Braveheart torture scene. The Brazilian was willing to risk snapping his groin mere hours before the Champions League final — all for the unrelenting love for the escalator. Incredible. Juve 1-2 Barca.

    LEGENDARY LINE UP
    Barca capitalised on this psychological victory by hitting an opener within just a few minutes of the game starting — the third-fastest net-buster in Champions League final history. The goal was highly predictable in its beauty – 16 widespread inch-perfect passes that saw the ball blitz in and off the perimeter of the pitch like a pummelled air hockey puck. Remarkably, Ivan Rakitić’s goal was the first Barca goal from open play without a Messi, Suarez, or Neymar goal/assist since February 28. It was an odd sight indeed — akin to Bono and The Edge having no involvement on the soaring vocals and guitar solos of a U2 track.

    That anomaly aside, Barca’s front three made sure the Juve backline was often more overworked than Jack Warner’s paper shredder. The trio worked in perfect sync all night as they have done all season. We shouldn’t be surprised by their affinity for one another — as this remarkable graphic released after the final shows, all three players were born in locations that line up geographically in a perfectly straight line.

    Intriguingly, if you extend that line southwards beyond South America (yup, we’ve rolled out the world map on our kitchen table), Off The Bar can predict that Barca’s next superstar will come from Ross Island — an Antarctic island principally home to a colony of half a million Adélie penguins. Admittedly, penguins are not natural footballers but stuck with a summer transfer ban, Barca can’t afford to be fussy. Next season, it will be fascinating to see if Barcelona can defend their European crown with an aquatic flightless bird in the squad setup.

    TEAR-SOAKED SWANSONGS

    Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the main narrative of the week spanned the narrative of the night: emotional goodbyes to two of the greatest midfielders the game has seen.

    Xavi Hernandez has now won four Champions League titles and he can add those to one World Cup, two European Championships, and eight La Liga crowns – to name a few. The man has won everything there is to win — check the results of your last village pumpkin growing competition and Xavi has almost certainly scooped the top prize three years running. Barca will find it very hard to say goodbye to such an exceptional club icon and that was reflective in Gerard Pique commandeering the goal net at full time — clearly under club orders to capture Xavi and hold him against his will until he promises to stay. Kidnap is not the most elegant way of holding on to a player, but the process has successfully stopped Messi from leaving for Manchester City the last three summers in a row.

    And what of poor Pirlo? The Juve metronome was absolutely crestfallen in the aftermath of Saturday’s defeat. Seeing him cry was the shock of the night, nay the tournament. A huge part of the midfielder’s aura is predicated by his almost motionless and emotionless demeanour — his beautiful messianic face is bottoxed still by an endless reservoir of tranquillity, calm and wisdom. Up until now the only thing that moved him was the sweet smell of a delicately decanted and ludicrously rare 19th century Malbec. It was heart-breaking and haunting to see such a majestic figure weep, but at least the upset was delivered in true Pirlo style. Even when it came to breaking into tears he managed to effortlessly cut loose from those around him and find the space to efficiently execute something special (applauding the winners) and thereby once again, perhaps for the last time, providing us with yet another moment of quiet class.

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