Luis Enrique hails Lionel Messi as ‘the best player in history’

 

The very last kick of the clásico could not have been more perfectly executed nor more dramatically delivered, Lionel Messi guiding the ball inside the post to take his team top. It was the 500th goal of his career and few have been more significant. It prompted Luis Enrique to say: “He is the best player in history.”

Just when it seemed all was lost there may be life in La Liga; there is life in Barcelona too. With five games to go they are leaders on their head-to-head record and, although Real Madrid have a game in hand and Zinedine Zidane rightly says “we still depend on ourselves,” nothing feels impossible now.

Thirty seconds earlier it had done. Barcelona thought they had been denied. There was a kind of crushing inevitability about the way James Rodríguez scored with five minutes to go. His goal made it 2-2, a scoreline that, had it stood, would have all but clinched the title, and in an appropriate way. This was a portrait of Madrid this season, a late goal from a substitute, another comeback, fans erupting in joy, Madrid, down to 10 men after Sergio Ramos’s 77th-minute red card, doing it again.

In fact, it was Barcelona who did it again. With the final seconds slipping away Sergi Roberto ran from deep and just kept on running. André Gomes went with him and so did Jordi Alba. When he pulled it back, Messi curled his shot into the corner. He had a black eye from the last game, a bleeding mouth from this one and he was still standing at the north end holding his shirt out, disbelief engulfing everything, when the referee blew the final whistle. “He is incredibly decisive at all times,” Luis Enrique, the Barcelona manager, added. “I have seen a lot of football, it is a great pleasure that he is one of us.”What a game this had been, and what a finish it had – one that reflected the 92 minutes that went before. It had been wonderful, wild and open to the end. Emotions swung with attacks. A classic clásico in which, if Messi stood above them all, it was not because others did not stand tall. It had been captivating from start to finish. “It was a match between two wonderful teams that gave everything to win and in truth either side could have been victorious,” Luis Enrique said.