He couldn’t have known how definitive it was at the time, but when Gerard Piqué last went nose to nose with his friend and former team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo, it took the genial, talented Catalan just over two minutes to effectively win the Champions League final, shatter Ronaldo’s dream and set in train the events which took CR9 not only to Real Madrid, but to the Camp Nou stadium tonight for Spain’s Clàsico.
Go back to Rome in May. Manchester United win a free-kick, Ronaldo cracks it in from an infeasible 35 metres. Victor Valdès can only block it and Ji-Sung Park is about to poke home the rebound when a man mountain arrives at TGV speed to make a remarkable goal-line block.
It was Piqué, of course, and within seven minutes Samuel Eto’o scores the goal which Sir Alex Ferguson later admits killed the game and ended United’s dream of becoming the first club ever to retain the Champions League.
How strange and quixotic football is.
When Ronaldo was coming through the ranks at Sporting Lisbon, long before he twisted Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs in knots and they persuaded Fergie to sign him, Barça were offered the choice of signing two Jorge Mendes clients – Sporting’s left winger Ricardo Quaresma or their right winger Cristiano Ronaldo.
Somehow, unbelievably, Barça thought the little gypsy, Quaresma, was the pearl and Ronaldo the oyster.
Had the scouts at the Camp Nou got it right then CR9 could have been playing all these years with Ronaldinho, Leo Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta.
And let’s throw Ronaldo’s opponent tonight, Piqué into that mix too. He should really have been playing with Ronaldo that night, not for Barça.
It was funny to hear some commentators in England describe Piqué disparagingly during the prologue to the Rome final.
The logic was that in order to save their precious time and not have to actually watch the monstrous form Piqué had been showing all season, it was enough to intuit that if United had sold him then he was, basically, a dud.
In fact the truth was much stranger than their fiction. Ferguson always rated Piqué immensely highly and provisionally had it planned that he and Jonny Evans would be United’s defensive lynchpins for a generation.
Instead, Carlos Quieroz turned up his nose at Piqué, convinced the United boss that he knew better, having trained the squad day in day out, and achieved his aim of moving the Catalan on. To this day, Piqué retains a letter from Ferguson that he cherishes because it details, at length, how much the Scot likes this lad as an individual, as a footballer and in the words there is hidden a sentiment that Fergie half-guessed at the time that he was indulging Quieroz’s will rather than making the correct decision.
Thus the man who turned those crucial first minutes of the Rome final could, and should, have been wearing the red and white of United.
Instead he’s here in Spain, dominant, popular, playing brilliantly, scoring regularly and shaping up as an absolute certainty to captain Barcelona and Spain in the not too distant future. Perhaps even to win the World Cup next summer.
Not bad for a guy who was famous for his night life, described himself as a “bit of an old lady” on the pitch or for a fella whose mates bought him a nightie from Victoria’s Secret on his last birthday and forced him to be photographed in it.
“Playing in England made me tough and playing alongside Gaby Milito at Zaragoza made me mean,” Piqué grins. “Look, Gaby’s a nice lad, but in a match he’s nasty. That’s me too, now. I really recall United with affection and it was as much of a pleasure having a football conversation with Fergie as it is now with Pep, here. OK, I had to put up with the Scottish sense of humour, but that man educated me in my profession.”
Ronaldo, who said on Friday that he fully expected to score 10 or 20 goals against Barcelona, without specifying whether he meant all of them tonight or across his entire career, returned against Zurich in midweek, after two months out, and should streak up and down both wings this evening in front of 98,000 growling Catalans.
Therefore his principal assailants should be Dani Alves and Eric Abidal – but Piqué will be the bad cop waiting to put his mate into the Camp Nou main stand if necessary. It’s also worth noting that even with eight weeks out injured, Ronaldo is still the La Liga player with the most efforts on goal and is also just about the best attacking header of a ball in Spain. Step forward Piqué,
From having been a bit short on concentration and long on la dolce vita he is now, arguably, amongst the best two or three central defenders anywhere in the world.
“I was a serious youngster because my parents made me work hard. My mum works in the Guttmann institute for spinal injuries so she would take me to see what can happen to you in life and remind me that the rest of us really have things lucky,” Piqué explains.
“But then when I started to go out on the lash it was a bit of an explosion. I really went for it. My dad always says that it took me a long time to rebel but I made up for lost time. However working for United taught me what it means to centre yourself on your profession and playing next to Puyi (Carles Puyol) has also been an education. I can find myself going into the tackle singing a song inside my head and maybe just with my focus drifting, but Puyi is a beast, always desperate not to lose.”
Both Puyol and Piqué scored at the Bernabéu when Barça thrashed Madrid 6-2 last season, something he knows will sting the La Liga leaders into looking for revenge tonight. It’s a little irony that our hero’s full name is actually Gerard Piqué Bernabéu – something which he owes to his mother’s maiden name but he doesn’t like to be teased about.
“All my life I’ve had that crap about Bernabéu,” he grimaces. “My granddad, Amador Bernabéu, was vice-president of FC Barcelona for many years so I’m not taking any nonsense from anyone. We are a totally, totally ‘Culé’ family and there have never, ever been any black sheep who supported Madrid … never.
“So for all of them I’d say we’ll give it to Madrid again this weekend. Two nil or three nil”. That’s Alex Ferguson calibre talk, that is.
