It was a night when Lionel Messi was thoroughly outstanding despite his team’s 3-0 defeat. When Barca lost 4-0 to Paris Saint-Germain in the last-16 first leg, it appeared as though the great man’s powers were finally waning, but Turin should annex such an idea. As well as Juventus played, with Max Allegri’s careful tactical plan delivering optimum results, they were still fortunate to escape suffering at the hands of Messi’s genius.
From two passes of superhuman accuracy, Messi deserved better than Andres Iniesta’s first-half miss while in the second half, Gianluigi Buffon was required to deliver his own brand of genius in saving a Luis Suarez shot to deny Barca their away goal.
Instead, Messi and his teammates were sunk by the finishing of Paulo Dybala, first when curving in from the flank and curling it around Marc-Andre ter Stegen in the seventh minute, and then thrashing home a second in the 22nd minute when Mario Mandzukic had laid off the ball in the inside-right channel. Dybala may brush aside comparisons to Lionel Messi, his Argentinian compatriot, but Tuesday night saw him announce himself as a talent who might one day accompany, and eventually supplant, Barcelona’s idol for both club and country.
“As a kid I dreamed of moments like this,” Dybala said in the immediate aftermath. “Today I made it happen. It was a great performance. We knew that we needed to win without conceding any goals and we did it.”
Those fireworks confirmed Barca legend Xavi’s prematch opinion that Dybala, 23, is “the right player for us” and a “natural talent already very ready to play for Barcelona.”
At present there seems to be no vacancy in Barcelona’s team, but that may not be long in coming. While Messi glittered all night despite being forced to do much of his work in midfield, Suarez was somewhat off the pace, a bruiser rather than cruiser as he battled in vain with Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Buffon. Messi will be 30 in June; Suarez passed that mark in January. With Luis Enrique moving on in the summer, a new coach may want something different from Barcelona’s attack.
Neymar, still just 25, was far quieter than he was when playing the hero of that 6-1 comeback against Paris Saint-Germain in the last-16. He may have been distracted by the three-match ban handed out earlier on Tuesday by Spanish football authorities, meaning he will miss Barcelona’s probably Liga-deciding Clasico on Apr. 23.
Meanwhile, Juventus would prefer that any speculation about Dybala is put to one side for the moment, with the player himself indicating his desire to stay on in Turin for a little while longer. “I am very happy at Juventus, my contract renewal is very close and I want to make the most of what we are doing here,” he said.
Departure day will come soon enough, however, since Juventus’s status as Italian football’s perennial dominant force never stopped them selling players like Zinedine Zidane back in 2001 or Paul Pogba last summer to pay for their next team. Buffon, expected to become part of his club’s hierarchy when he hangs up his gloves, seemingly spoke for the Juventus organisation after the match.
“Dybala has grown exponentially over the last two years,” Buffon said afterward, adopting the tones of a sporting director.
“When I talk to directors or friends in football, I’ve been saying for a while that he is good enough to be in the top five players in the world and wouldn’t be out of place in the top three. Having said that, he needs to prove it every time and with regularity, to show he is worthy of our expectations of him.”
Allegri, during a news conference in which he thoroughly enjoyed himself despite the job only being half-done, was playful when asked about Juve’s latest shining star. “Paulo played a great game but I don’t need to tell you that,” he said.
Tuesday night had been an occasion in which Dybala made a great leap into world football’s broader consciousness and surged beyond the confines of Serie A, where his reputation was already high when making a €32 million arrival from Palermo in June 2015, on the eve of the Champions League final that Juventus lost 3-1 to Barcelona. Two seasons on, he served as Juve’s match-winner, taking them to the brink of revenge for that night in Berlin.
Dybala shone in the presence of Messi. There are comparisons to draw between the pair — one of them being that both were red-carded on their debuts for Argentina — but Tuesday at the Juventus Stadium also proposed that they are different players. Despite playing off centre-forward Gonzalo Higuain, Dybala is far more of a pure striker than Messi has ever been, and even at 23 years old it’s difficult to imagine him conducting the orchestra as Argentine’s elder statesman did, trying to inspire a stirring push for an away goal that never came.
It should also be remembered that by 23, Messi was already the world’s best. His performance in defeat in Turin reminded why he still retains that status.
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