Goodbye, "Barca"

The peak leaves, and the magic "Barcelona" with him ...

The peak leaves. This news causes sadness. We were familiar with him for eternity-fourteen many years, when he went on the field in the blue-border T-shirt twice a week and was an unchanging part of what was called the “best team of the world”. He was part of her as well as Messi, Suarez, Rakitich, Puyol. None of them are in the team. After this Saturday, there will be no peak. Of the previous, past, romantic and beautiful, one Buskit will remain - the last of the Mogican of the Great Age.

The greatness or meaning of the peak - any of the two words is suitable here - it was precisely in his connection with that football and that team. With a magical football and a magic team that came up with a game consisting of permanent control of the ball, a small draw, which sometimes lasted almost ten minutes in a row, and exemplary heads that were similar to the climax in the sound of a symphony orchestra. The players in this team, like the instruments in the orchestra, had their own parties, and they led them with the skill of large artists: intended for Messi’s miracles, King of the heads of Suarez, intellectuals of Havi and Youth, the Rakitich motor ... The peak in this orchestra was a central defender, periodically coming to the place of the central striker.

In this team, consisting of unusual people, the center of protection could not be an ordinary huge and bulky defender who would chop the mighty leg to the right and left and the entire penalty filled with liters of labor sweat.

Huge - 1 m 94 cm - the peak was elegant in his rhythm and plastic, elegant in the unexpected strokes, which he periodically demonstrated, breaking out of the crowd of opponents surrounding him.

Another, ordinary, defender in such a situation when they covered, surrounded, was about to be strangled with pressure, in a panic he landed the ball to hell, but such a game was impossible for the smartest “Barcelona”, it would mean the loss of dignity and style. These were amazing moments: Kalancha went into the stroke and gracefully beat two or three in the tiny space.

Then - pass. Long passes of the peak were a bright occurrence in this team, which preferred to seep through the protection with a small pass. He gave a long pass from his half of the field, often from the penalty area, and the ball flew eighty meters on horseback and always arrived for sure: to the exit, which had run away in the center of Suarez or exactly to the chest of the extreme midfielder who was already waiting for the ball. It was amazing not only that the peak was never mistaken in long and super -long passes - first of all, his vision was surprised, that he saw the entire space of the field from his penalty area, and saw not in statics, but in dynamics, that is, he caught a movement far ahead. And he not only saw this movement, but also created it with his pass - as a long pointer pointed out to the team where to run and where to be.

On a par with his passes, as his distinctive element, stood his numerous-countless-tackles that never had the character of a brutal act, as is customary, for example, in the English Premier League, where the tackle is performed with the aim of tearing his legs with the ball and causes a cry of horror in the stands. The peak rolled up with his whole long body to pick up the ball a second earlier than the striker rushing at all pairs. Once - and the ball was on his rise, and the striker flew by, dousing with heat. These clean, without self -mutilation, tackles of the peak fit perfectly into the style of the “Bars”, which contrasted the mind, and rudeness of grace.

We saw a lot of strong central defenders. We recall them now briefly - I was smashed with a shaved head, Japa, and Maguire with an always motionless face, and a furious Kellin with a face filled with blood, for he always without a doubt pushed his head under the leg of the attacker, and a huge Morgan from the championship “Leicester”, which was terrible to approach, because he was a spectacle of incredible physical power, and many others, and many others, and many others. His body is in concrete loser, and his head is in a brick to beat them on the ball. You can hardly find the elegant among them, and all the more valuable was the elegance of the peak, which, connecting to the attack, with the ideal sense of style corresponded to the game that Messi, Havi and Iniesta led. I don’t remember in what game, against whom-it doesn’t matter-he joined the whore of the attack and inside the penalty area with one movement of the heel threw the ball to one of the attackers who did not break, although he could, but also gave a pass.

The goal did not happen right away, but after a series of fast, light passes, each of which caused delight with his wit. An instant PAC PIK was perfectly inscribed in this music.

In all this - in distant passes, in humane impeccable tackles, in the vision of the game, in the ability to find himself in the direction of the blow and close the gate with his body (he did this many times), a beautiful football education of the peak was felt - a graduate of La Masia, where he got at ten years old and where his friends were the boys Sesk Fabregas and Leo Messi. In that children's team Messi was the smallest, and the peak is the highest. And after all, the graduate of La Masia Pike was sent to Manchester United, to the Premier League, where the bones were cracking and baking their heads in the ball, and from there they returned to Spain, to Saragos-no one saw in him what he could and was supposed to become. Only his old friend, a friend of the childhood of Messi, with whom they played hundreds of games on the perfect training fields of the Barcelona academy, was seen. It was Messi who approached the President of the club Lapate and asked to take the PIK team - he wanted to play with him and foresaw that it was such a Center for the ideal team that arose in those years and which was to become a football miracle.

The peak leaves strangely. He has another one and a half years of contract. Players in the current business football prefer to spend time before the end of the contract anywhere-on a bench, in stock-but not to break it and not lose big money.

It is even more strange that the peak, included in the expanded list of the Spanish national team for the World Cup, goes two weeks before the World Cup, although he could go to Qatar.

And it would be for him the fourth world championship - as for Pele and Yashin. Many players specially keep their form for a career to get to the World Cup - Piquet waved his hand and turned to the open door with his back.

He is 35 years old. Perhaps he knows for sure about himself what we assume and what we guess about. In almost four hundred matches for Barcelona and in a hundred matches for the Spanish national team, his motivation may have been erased, as wheeled from continuous rotation was erased. Football has changed. His friends left. They are not - someone on the field, whom in Barcelona. In the new team, among new faces and young animals, he does not look very confident, and sometimes bewildered. In the League of the Champions League with Inter, the Italian Barella attacked him at such a speed and such fury that he did not have time, did not keep track of the peak ... And his hands spread to the sides looked awkward and ridiculous, just like his hide before entering the field in the La Liga, when he sat in a deep spare without a hetire and shields, and in slate, and in slate, and in slate, and in slate, a On the laces of his boots, there was suddenly a knot, which he could not untie for a long time. And he whistled.

It is very difficult when you have caused love and respect for people all your life, and now they will whistle you. It is not easy, to go out onto the Kampa Kampa field and know that thousands of people look at you from huge, rising up the stands of the stands with close attention, and each of your movement is considered as a microscope. Another central defender, the German Mertezaker, having finished playing, said that he was silent about all the years of his glorious career: that he could not withstand pressure, that before each game, every time he had to go on the field, under the views of the stands, he was sick. The peak leaves because something has broken in it, it leaves, because the Barcelona has already left that was his life, it leaves, because after that game it no longer see the meaning in any other.