Such was their utter dominance on Wednesday night, Barcelona must have felt they were on the receiving end of a particularly cruel April Fool’s joke when glancing up at the scoreboard to see it read 2-2 at full time against Arsenal.
But no. It really did happen. Instead we can rely on tales of ‘ref-mobiles’ – that’s match officials on Segways of course – for our yearly dose of hilarity.
Back to Barcelona and the disappointing news that Cesc Fabregas could miss the rest of the season due to a broken leg. The Indepdent’s Jason Burt captures superbly the drama of an emotional night for the Arsenal captain as he scored against his boyhood heroes in an epic contest.
“For 84 minutes Cesc Fabregas suffered from a sore knee and a bad case of wounded pride. There may even have been a bout of twisted blood to contend with because rarely, if ever, will he have been given the run-a-round like this.
“And then he went to ground, under Carles Puyol’s challenge, and his world, which had been crumbling around him, gained some semblance of stability. Fabregas drove home the penalty, so powerfully that he did further damage to himself, and collapsed on the turf. What a price to pay. Maybe his World Cup is over, too. The storylines continued.
“Arsenal may not have deserved anything from this match, but for sheer belligerent determination in the face of being completely outplayed, they must be lauded. It beggared belief that they had somehow salvaged a draw from what was set to be a humbling experience.”
Burt continues:
“His appearance had been a calculated risk – a risk now not worth taking – and he and Arsene Wenger will have reasoned that the opponents, the occasion, the adrenalin, plus a pain-killing injection, in all probability, would have propelled him through. He was, after all, desperate to be out there against the club he left, aged 15, and who still regard him as the one that got away and to whom, one day, he may return to play alongside his childhood friends, Lionel Messi and Gerard Pique.
“The pressure on Fabregas was, therefore, immense because he was not just Arsenal’s driving force, Wenger’s icon, but facing the club coached by the player, Pep Guardiola, he had idolised. What a maelstrom of emotion to contend with.”
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