I watched the Ac Milan-Barcelona game on Wednesday night,
and Barcelona didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory. Slow, predictable
passing, poor decision-making, defensive frailty-all there, present and
correct. Even Messi, usually so explosive, didn’t seem to be there in spirit. The
whole team, it seemed, were just going through the motions, always taking the
simple risk-free five-yard pass without any incisiveness, or any desire to be
incisive, any attempts to beat a man or power past an opponent, scared of being
dispossessed or hurt by the admittedly impressive Italians.
Except for one man. One proud, defiant man, who for 90
minutes before his enforced substitution put everything on the line for his
team, one man who can look back on the game from a Barcelona perspective and
not be disappointed in himself. Carles Puyol.
One image from the game really epitomises why I love Puyol so much. It was the 84th minute, his team-mates looking like
they’d already resigned themselves to pegging back the 2-0 deficit at the Camp
Nou, when Xavi swung in a corner and Puyol, bloodied bandage flying off his
head, leapt to meet it. You could hear the thud as the ball hit his head on the
spot where it had been stapled back together twenty minutes previously, a
visceral summation of Puyol’s style, his hair flying everywhere as he put all
his power into the header. It was amazing, pure physical effort imposing itself
on what had until now been an entirely turgid performance.
In a team that, Wednesday excepted, are usually so clinical,
anaesthetising, hypnotising teams with a thousand passes until the operation is
completed with surgical precision by Messi, Puyol is like a punch to the face;
not elegant, not beautiful, but knocking the opposition out all the same. In a
team full of intricate passers with quick feet and quicker brains, Puyol looks
like he’d be more comfortable hoofing the ball up to a big man up top; he’s a
British player in a Spanish team and he knows it. The other players of
Barcelona look calm and assured on the ball; Puyol looks terrified every time
it comes near him, and he tries to send it back from whence it came as quickly
and frenetically as he can. Not that he can’t play, his record speaks for itself-18
major titles won in 14 years of first-team football- but he knows his
limitations and plays to his immense strength, using his heart as well as his
head.
He’s a tyrannosaurus rex hunting with a pack of velociraptors,
and it’s so endearing. In a team full of clones, small dark-haired Spaniards
relentlessly passing the ball to each other, he is the one who stands out, his
leonine hair flying free as he leaps into another full-contact header. He makes
Barca, and Spain, less boring, not least because when you watch him you feel
like Jamie Carragher has put on a wig and snuck his way onto the pitch. Who can
forget that header against Germany, world-cup semi-final, 2010, winning goal
from a corner as his team looked to be running out of ideas, a thumping
reminder that brawn has its place alongside brain. That is Puyol, a
meshing of physical strength with a great understanding of the game, a player
who’ll never accept defeat and, in a Barcelona team that seems to be finding
the going hard, a reminder of the power that sheer determination can have.
