So…. Picture this… it’s a Champions League semi
final and there’s 2 minutes left on the clock… if Barcelona score, they’re in the final, if not
they get knocked out immediately… only problem, they hadn't even gotten a single shot on target…
but then… *flash of the goal* Iniesta scored… they had called him “shy”, “discreet”, “humble”...
whatever… for years, he had been overshadowed, overlooked… it shocked the world that THAT kid
had scored THAT goal… the only one who wasn’t shocked was Pep Guardiola… because he had seen
that exact same thing happen 10 years before…
On the 21st of July 1999, for once the Barcelona
players sat on the stands of the camp nou, as their under-14s took over the pitch to play
the final of the club world cup… it should’ve been a moment for the team to sit back and relax
for an hour, but by the time the number 4 got a touch on the ball, Pep was sitting on the edge
of his seat… a few minutes later, he told Xavi: “I know you will retire me one day, but I must
tell you that kid will retire us both”... then in injury time, with the game tied up… *flash
of the goal*... Iniesta scored… Minutes later, Guardiola himself had gotten down to the pitch
to make sure he was one to hand him the trophy, so he could deliver him a message: “In 10
years, I’ll be watching you from the stands again”... the only thing he got wrong, was
that instead he was watching from the bench…
Still, it shouldn’t come as a shock that the
world found it so hard to believe that such an average looking kid could be the next all time
great… I mean, Iniesta was born in a town that didn’t even have a football pitch… There's an
actual saying that goes “At Albacete, you take a dump and you leave”... and Iniesta isn’t even
from Albacete, he’s from Fuentealbilla… which is literally 100x smaller… The only reason Iniesta
even managed to get into an academy was that his father had had his very own failed football
career, never making it past the third tier… so he decided he’d do anything to make sure his son
wouldn’t have to live with that same regret…
He went digging through his phone book, found the
number of one of his old managers, Pedro Camacho, the brother of José Antonio Camacho and got him at
trial at Albacete… The day he finally got there, there were 200 kids fighting for a handful of
spots… and still, 5 minutes later, they were already telling him to come off the pitch, telling
him that “they couldn’t watch the other kids, if none of them were even able to get the
ball away from Iniesta”... and that never changed… His family members would take turns,
driving him 40 miles to training 3 times a week, completely convinced that sooner or later his
talent would be noticed… and once he turned 12… it happened… The team traveled to Madrid
for the biggest tournament in the country and against all odds Iniesta carried little
Albacete all the way to the semi finals, beating Real Madrid in the process and taking
the prize for best player in the tournament, a ticket for a theme park in Barcelona, which was
oddly convenient, since on that same tournament they invited him to visit La Masia… which
created a bit of a conflict of interests…
Believe it or not, Iniesta had already told the
reporters that he was “Real Madrid through and through” and with the Camacho family involved,
everyone was lead to believe that he’d end up there but their scouts kept insisting he was “too
small” and while they waited around for the kid to grow, Barcelona snatched him up, making him the
youngest kid at La Masia… And if, at that point, it was already humiliating that Real had let him
escape like that… it became a lot worse when, only about a year after that famous moment
with Guardiola, that tiny kid started training with the first team… Then, well… Real Madrid
spent 7 years trying to undo that mistake…
In fact, that same year, they were almost
successful… with the kid having just won the under 16 Euros, his father began negotiating his first
contract, but Barcelona had just blown 35 million making Saviola the most expensive teenager of all
time, so they started low balling everyone else and it got bad enough that the father told them,
clear as day: “We’re going to Madrid!”.... Had the president himself, Joan Gaspart, not come down
to straighten things up… who knows what could have happened… After all, a year later, once Iniesta
doubled down, winning the Under 19 Euros as well, Real got so desperate that Iniesta’s father
claims that he had to constantly ignore their calls… that, at one point, even Carlos Sainz,
the two time World Rally Champion and a massive madridista, kept calling him up trying to convince
him to bring the kid to Madrid… it didn’t work…
Instead, the next year, he got his debut…
and by 2005, no player in the team had made more appearances than him… there was only one
big problem… 90% of those appearances were off the bench… it was becoming increasingly clear
that Iniesta was seen as the kind of guy that only gets a start when someone else is injured… a
second grade player… and the next season that only became more frustrating… With Xavi blowing out
his ACL, Iniesta completely took over the center of the pitch… As Barcelona steamrolled their way
to the Champions League final, he was right there, playing every single minute and always a cut
above the rest… and still, when the team sheet came out… he was on the bench… even his teammates
were shocked… For 45 minutes he watched Barcelona succumb beneath a 10 man Arsenal… it was only
after Eto’o approached the bench asking why Iniesta wasn’t coming on that Rijkaard realized
his mistake… and with 3 substitutions he flipped the game on its head… Larsson assisted both,
Beletti scored the winner, and yet when Henry was asked about that game, he said: “We all know
the story of Larsson and Belleti, but the person who killed us that day was Andrés Iniesta”…
But again, even though his performance was impressive enough that it got him called up to
the world cup despite having never played for the national team before… once back at Barcelona,
he was back in the same old debate, either getting benched, fetching water for the “superstars” or
getting played out of position while the pundits kept yapping about how “two fragile midfielders
could never work together”... and still once Real Madrid made their finally run for his signing,
triggering his release clause, laying 60 million on the table and handing him a blank check…
Iniesta said no… despite the fact that, on top of all the struggles I already mentioned, he
was one of the worst paid players in the squad…
Thankfully, that scare served as a bit of an eye
opener for Barcelona… they renewed his contract, they made him a regular starter… but still…
Rijkaard kept playing him on the wing… I mean, in a way I get it, every year Don Balon
kept naming him as one of the best players in the league regardless… As they say, if it
ain’t broke, don’t fix it… even in the Euros, Aragonés did the same… and guess what? Despite
playing half the tournament with the stomach flu, he still managed to put in a man of the
match performance in the semi final, making it into the team of the tournament as Spain
finally won the Euros after 44 trophyless years… and still the best thing that happened to him that
year… was that Pep Guardiola took over the team…
When they asked the fabled question: “Xavi or
Iniesta?”... he replied “Both… Never one or the other… Together, always… People say they shouldn’t
ever be played together, I think they shouldn’t ever be played apart”... and so… it began….
After a draw and a defeat in Guardiola’s first two league matches, with sacking rumors already flying
around… the ever-so-timid Iniesta entered his office and said to him “Don’t worry, keep doing
what you’re doing, I promise you we are gonna destroy everyone”... and from that moment on,
Iniesta went undefeated even though, out of the 12 league matches he missed through injury, Barcelona
only managed to win 6… They were a completely different team when he was on the pitch… El País
had no choice but to name him the best in the country, they even nicknamed Nureyev… because
he ruled the pitch not by force, not by fear… but grace… except for the infamous goal against
Chelsea… that one was built on pure frustration… and it had… far more… than its fair share of
consequences… his whole career, his whole life was at stake… all because of that one moment…
Following that match, Iniesta began feeling a slight pinch on his right thigh, precisely the
one he used to score that goal… and 4 days later, the medical staff ruled him out with his 4th
muscle injury of the season… They made it quite clear to him that he either stayed away from the
pitch or it could be the end of his playing days… but the moment he left the team behind, as it
had been all season, Barcelona lost the two matches they had to play before the Champions
League final… and with the treble at stake, Iniesta had a decision to make… and as he
explained: “I knew right there that I would play regardless of the risk, there was nothing more on
my mind, I wanted to win, I would have made that final even if both my legs were broken”...
But no matter what his state was, before the final Sir Alex famously insisted “I’m not obsessed
with Messi, Iniesta is the real danger”... and 10 minutes in, he had already assisted the goal that
won them the trophy… At the post match conference Rooney called him “the best player in the world”
… while Eto’o, who had already said that before, simply told the reports: “I told you so”... and
when 9 months later, the birth rates in Catalunya spiked 50%, they asked Guardiola who was to
blame and he said: Iniesta… but that was the glorious said of the story, the reality was that
once the medical staff checked back on him after the match… they could immediately tell he had made
a massive mistake… and for the next 410 days, he would walk through hell trying to make it right…
By September, Iniesta had spent 6 out of the last 10 months recovering from injuries and it had
taken a massive toll on him mentally… At the time, no one really knew about this, except for one
report that he was supposedly spotted crying inside the training grounds… but 8 years
later, he revealed that during the early stages of recovery, he fell into depression…
that he “fell into a pit with no way out”... his own mom was quoted saying that: “You know
something must be very wrong, when your 26 year old son shows up in the middle of the night asking
you to hold him”... and the worst part was that fate was extremely cruel… As Iniesta prepared to
make it back from injury, Dani Jarque, captain of rivals Espanyol and ironically one of his best
friends, a man that had won gold at the under-19 euros alongside him… passed away suddenly from a
heart attack… sending Iniesta into an even deeper hole… as he explained: “The days following his
death were awful, I felt like I was in freefall, like everything had gone dark… I told my family
I wasn’t sure where I would end up if things kept going at that rate, that I had to find help”...
And thankfully, a year later, no matter how many training sessions he had to leave early,
how many times his injuries came back to haunt… even though, as one article put
it: “he had lived a whole life in just Once there, even after an injury scare forced him
to leave the opening game and skip the second, Iniesta came back to secure the goal that
put Spain in the knockouts and three 1 nil wins later… Spain found themselves
in their first ever world cup final…
3 hours before the match, Iniesta was being
treated by one of the team’s doctors and asked him: “Can you write something on a shirt for
me? There’s someone I wanna dedicate my goal to”... and 117 minutes into the match, in classic
Iniesta fashion, he score the most important goal in the history of Spain, winning his country
their first ever world cup… and as he ran to celebrate… he pulled up his jersey and revealed
a message: “Dani Jarque, always with us”... and so the next time he faced Espanyol, their fans
gave their supposed rival a standing ovation, as one newspaper wrote: “This is a once in a
lifetime event for a once in a lifetime man… In one sweep of his foot, the quiet prince of Spanish
football became king”... but above all what that goal gave him… was the strength he needed to
close out the darkest chapter of his life…
6 months later, he was second on the Ballon D’Or…
5% of the votes were all that separated him from Lionel Messi and Xavi was the one completing the
podium… and so by the end of that season, when they faced United in the Champions League final
again, they put up a performance so incredible, I could dare to call it perfect had United’s
only shot on target not gone in… so traumatizing that according to Xavi and Abidal, Wayne
Rooney himself asked them to slow down, hilariously telling them that “We’re already
dead”... it was absolute supremacy… so much so that almost a year later, Iniesta was still
holding on to the same unbeaten run… by then 38 matches in all competitions and eventually 55
consecutive league matches spanning over 3 years… the longest in the history … and if there were
still any doubts that, at his prime, Iniesta was virtually unbeatable then… came the 2012 Euros…
Iniesta opened up the tournament with a man of the match performance against Italy and from then on,
Spain did not concede a single goal for the rest of the tournament… not necessarily because their
defense was superhuman, but because for most of those 5 remaining matches, with Iniesta commanding
his squad… the other teams barely got a hold of the ball… In the match against Ireland, he was
involved in 2 out of the 4 goals… against Croatia, he assisted the late winner… When they faced
France, he started the play that led to their first goal… when Portugal forced them into
penalties, he converted… and in the final, he took the man of the match award a third
time, as they dismantled Italy 4 to none… when the time to hand out the award arrived,
Iniesta wasn’t just the player of the tournament… no… in an era dominated by Ronaldo and Messi,
UEFA named him… the best player in Europe…
From that moment on, Iniesta just kept on stacking
awards… By December, he made the Ballon D’Or podium again, by the end of the season, he won the
World Playmaker Of The Year Award with 22 assists… the next year he doubled down… by 2014, he was
named the best midfielder in La Liga for the 4th year in a row… and with all that done…then…
Suarez arrived at the club and the famous MSN trio led the squad towards a second golden
era… but just as they found themselves one match away from a treble… Xavi announced that he would
finally leave the club at the end of the season…
This was no surprise, he was already 35…
Iniesta himself was 31… but that day, he decided he would make sure that the treble
would be Xavi’s parting gift… and so 4 minutes into the Champions League final he had assisted
Rakitic for the opener… and 74 minutes later, as Iniesta left the pitch as the only player in
history to be named man of the match in a Euro, World Cup and Champions League final… Xavi came
in… and for a split second we witnessed the final time those two geniuses shared the pitch…
For 3 years, Iniesta still managed to keep the troops at bay… Matter of fact, he still
held onto his place on the Ballon D’Or list for one more year, he even managed to become
the third Barcelona player in history to get a standing ovation at the Bernabeu…
only Maradona, Ronaldinho and him… but every year, his injuries kept slowly robbing
him of his powers… and by 2017/2018, after going through 7 in a single season, Iniesta himself left
the Camp Nou for good… but as much as his goodbye was glorious, there was no one there who could
offer him the kind of goodbye he gave Xavi… but his old friend made sure to write him a letter and
somewhere in it, he told him: “Remember when they said we couldn’t play together… Andrés, we surely
proved them wrong”...
