“It smelt of danger,” Diego Simeone said. Late on Sunday night, all drenched in black, Atlético Madrid’s manager could see it coming and so could everyone else, a ball collected 50 yards out that felt like an open goal. Chests tightened: there was a long way to go, a lot of defenders in front of him – five six, seven of them – a passage so tight and a target so small it was hard enough to see, let alone hit, but it already felt like Lionel Messi had escaped. They had, after all, seen this so many times before: the same moment, the same movement, the same outcome, simultaneously happening in slow motion and stuck on fast-forward, which defines him somehow. It was all so very Messi.

He had been waiting, watching, Simeone said. Now, with four minutes left Messi went, like Luke Skywalker beginning his approach into the trench. “He’s infallible when he runs; he has the radar open,” Ernesto Valverde said. Inside he went, away from Saúl Ñíguez. Away from Thomas Partey. He played the ball to Luis Suárez and kept going, brushing past Thomas again. Almost there, almost there. Suárez gave it straight back. And then, enclosed but able to see the light, just in range, Messi guided the kind of shot that destroys the Death Star. Press pause the way he seems able to press pause and you see four men alongside him, an alley where the only route out is his route, a tiny opening between Jan Oblak’s hand and the post. Which, with astonishing inevitability, is exactly where it went.

Lionel Messi 😍



This incredible winning goal in last night's win over Atletico Madrid 🔥



6th Ballon d'Or incoming tonight? 🥇#MondayMotivation pic.twitter.com/FuQaXbwz2m — Premier Sports 📺 (@PremierSportsTV) December 2, 2019

A golazo, a golazo,” Simeone said afterwards. “All you can do is applaud.” He actually did too, as Messi dashed off celebrating, thudding his chest, teammates pilling on. He’d been powerless there, they all had, and now they were beaten. It hadn’t been Messi’s best game, some said: just the 66 passes, nine dribbles, three chances created, and one 60-yard run. But with the 99th touch of his 701st game, the night before he was expected to collect his sixth Balon d’Or – more than anyone else ever and still less than he might have done – he had won another match. 85 minutes, one-nil again.

There was much else to pick up from this game: Greizmann’s poor return to the Metropolitano, toy rats on his plaque outside, his every touch whistled and his one shot sailing over; Ivan Rakitic’s return to the team; Suárez’s overlooked, decisive role in every clear chance to Héctor Herrera’s performance inmidfield; Kieran Trippier’s superb crossing; Atlético’s new reality, Simeone calling this “a transitional year”. Above all, it had been Marc-André ter Stegen, hands so fast, wrists so strong. But then it became about Messi again. And if that suggests Messi gets talked about too much, the opposite might actually be true.

Eighteen months ago, Simeone had said if you get Messi to swap sides, you get a different result. That day, a Messi free kick – that other signature goal of his – had given Barcelona a 1-0 win at the Camp Nou. Now it had happened again only in Madrid, rounding off a week that might have sunk Barcelona but which saw them still on top, set for the season. Victorious against Dortmund on Wednesday, four days later they had beaten Atlético too. “These are games that win you the league,” Sergi Roberto said.

“Messi and the same story as ever,” AS’s headline called it. “That showed what it is to have the world’s best player,” Atlético director Clemente Villaverde said. “He’s the one that makes the difference. The reason why he’s the best is that he does it with terrible ease,” Saúl insisted. So much ease that people make the mistake of thinking it’s easy, a failure every time he doesn’t do it. Which really isn’t that often, considering. As Jorge Valdano once put it: “Messi is Maradona every day.” Even Maradona wasn’t Maradona every day.

This goal, another winner, was Messi’s first at the Wanda Metropolitano. Against Atlético, at least: he had scored here in the Copa del Rey final against Sevilla, his 28th in a final. But it was also his 30th goal against them. Simeone has never defeated Barcelona in the league, in 16 attempts. Messi has scored more against Atlético than anyone except Sevilla. Valencia and Real Madrid follow close behind, always beating up on the little guys. Yes, they have played the bigger teams more often, but that still means he is running at 0.64 goals per game against Madrid, 0.77 against Atlético, 0.97 against Sevilla and 0.85 against Valencia. To put that into context, in a 38-game season solely against Atlético, he would get 29.2 goals, competing for the Pichichi every year, winning it in most of them.

Antoine Griezmann skied his one effort against his old club, on a night he was the recipient of a barracking from home fans. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images

As if goals are the only thing. “I’d like to have an explanation for Leo,” Valverde said of the player who perhaps too often is the explanation for his team. In El País, Ramón Besa noted how Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s famous 1969 article “Barça! Barça! Barça!”, the beginning of a process in which the concept of mès que un club was created, articulating an identity for Barcelona, has given way to “Messi! Messi! Messi!” There is a debate to be had about the risks inherent in Messi-dependence, the structural flaws and his own culpability in that, but no real debate about the reality of it. In his 701 Barcelona games, in which he has scored 613 goals, Messi has also got somewhere 235 and 250 assists, depending on which stats you believe.

From Sport. The teams Messi has scored the most against. Beats up on the little guys. pic.twitter.com/VkmSV0IXNB — Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) November 25, 2019

Another questionable stat appeared over the weekend. Messi had played 66 passes against Atlético, the figures said, but it was 67; it’s just that one of them was into the net. He so rarely seems to shoot in the traditional sense. Often, he doesn’t even seem to really kick the ball: he sort of runs into it and then it runs off in exactly the direction he wants it to. Watch it again – watch his passes too – and he does not draw his foot back, let alone swing a leg. Yet the ball travels as if he had walloped it. It’s like he sees the move in slow motion but won’t let anyone else do the same, executing it too fast for that, no pause, no hesitation, no breaking stride. “A goal seen a thousand times and a thousand times astonishing due to his astounding ability to adjust his shots to the run,” wrote Pepe Sámano in El País.

The ball that Suárez laid back to him, Sámano said, was a “golden ball.” And that, of course, was the theme everyone else went for. “A golden ball,” said the cover of Marca, the photo capturing the moment Messi finished it. “That’s why he’s the Ballon d’Or,” said the front of El Mundo, assuming he is. Sport and El Mundo Deportivo turned up in the same dress for the second day running. “A test forged in fire,” they said on Sunday morning; “Golden Goal”, they said on Monday morning, test passed. Messi had led them through the flames again.

Messi is expected to collect the Ballon d’Or on Monday. It would be his sixth and logic suggests it will be his last. Now 32, France Football reported that he told Neymar that he will be gone in two years. And then what? There will be complaints of course, cases made for other players – brilliant, all of them – and calls of injustice at awarding the prize to the man who provided more assists and more goals than anyone else last season, Europe’s top scorer and the Champions League’s top scorer too, the man whose candidacy is discredited with the same criteria used to accredit others. But when he picked up the ball a long way from goal Simeone already smelled danger, a predictability about the extraordinary moment that was unfolding which served as another, timely reminder that no one has played better than Leo Messi in 2019. Maybe no one has played better than Leo Messi, full stop.

Talking points

“These are the games that win leagues,” Marcelo said after Real Madrid beat Alavés 2-1 at Mendizorroza on Saturday afternoon – the same place they lost 1-0 last season. Sergio Ramos had opened the scoring before Oliver Burke, on as a sub, immediately helped Alavés back into it, Lucas Pérez putting away the penalty. But then Dani Caravjal got the winner. That’s eight unbeaten for Madrid now.



“Make no mistake: we have to improve,” Julen Lopetegui said, but Sevilla won again and they’re third. It’s a Basque one and two (well, four and five) just behind them, Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao both winning again.



“We need footballers who really feel their profession; we can’t go on with novices and the naive,” The Espanyol manager Pablo Machín said. “It’s really sodding tough to play, but it’s as bad to be on the bench having to take responsibility for things that it’s not you doing. If we think someone is going to come along and pull us out the shit …” Beaten 4-2 by Osasuna, whistled by their fans having picked up a single point at home all season, and five points from safety, Espanyol are in big, big trouble.