Leo Messi ran on to the pitch at 9.45pm and changed everything. No, wait, that’s not right: Messi didn’t run on to the pitch at all; in fact, he barely even walked. No impatient hopping up and down on the spot or heading imaginary balls, no self-conscious sprint into the action or determined look, no instructions for team-mates, fingers signalling a new formation. Instead, he waited silently on the touchline for the ball to go out – over three minutes, it took – and for Ivan Rakitic to arrive and kiss him on the cheek. Then he took a few slow, almost bored steps forward and stopped again, standing a couple of metres from where he had been standing before. As if it didn’t matter, as if it was no big deal.

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But it did and it was. Three games in is no time to declare any match decisive, but this was as close as it gets – especially with the fixture list arranged so Real Madrid and Barcelona can’t face each other in the first six weeks or last three weeks of the season. On Saturday night Barcelona faced Atlético at the Calderón, the round after Atlético won 3-0 in Seville: the last two champions, both with six points, in a meeting that clinched the last two titles and defined those seasons. Two years ago, Barcelona couldn’t beat Atlético in six and won nothing; last year they beat them all four times and won it all, their recovery commencing at the Camp Nou and concluding at the Calderón.

It came, too, with Diego Simeone claiming that the league was “dangerously prepared for Real Madrid”, even as he coaches probably the best squad in Atlético’s history, and with Barcelona stretched. By the time Arda Turan and Aleix Vidal are able to join a short squad on 4 January, they’ll have been away to Athletic, Atlético, Celta, Sevilla, Getafe, Madrid, Valencia, and Espanyol, adding two Super Cups and a World Club Cup to their normal fixtures. Plus Gerard Piqué, Claudio Bravo and Dani Alves were out; Neymar had crossed the Atlantic and trained just twice; Javier Mascherano had trained once; and Thomas Vermaelen soon limped off. As for Messi, he hadn’t trained at all and was left on the bench – for the first time in 40 games.

Along the top of the bench, a slogan ran: “Play every game as if it was the last.” No one would play their last game without Messi, but there he was, sitting with his feet up as the photographers surrounded him, clicking away. In front of him, a fascinating game soon unfolded, but it was missing something; it still felt like everyone was waiting for him. Everyone except him.

In the 51st minute Fernando Torres had done what Fernando Torres always used to do and scored against Barcelona; in the 54th Neymar had equalised with a superb free-kick; and in the 56th, Messi was called. For three minutes the ball didn’t go out, so he stood. Then he ambled on to the pitch and stood once more.

The last time Messi had begun on the bench was away at Real Sociedad in San Sebastián last January. The decision had been Luis Enrique’s and his alone, Barcelona lost 1-0 and a crisis began. The next day, Messi didn’t train. The sporting director was sacked, his assistant walked, replacement managers were sought, and presidential elections were held. That day he had not looked interested; this time he did not look interested either, not at first. But a lot has changed since then, and this was different.

It is often said that when relationships are good, teams win. That phrase can also be turned on its head: when teams win, relationships are good. What’s happened since then? The easy answer is: Barcelona won the treble, that’s what. That’s not all of course, and separating cause from consequence is complex, but it is a factor. Back then Barcelona found an uneasy truce and a seemingly temporary solution that became a lasting one. The president intervened, Xavi too, and communication slowly opened up, mutual dependence and shared goals imposed. They beat Atlético the following week and so it began. Success brought something stronger; the shift was there to be seen on Saturday, and success on Saturday reinforced it still further.

Messi being a sub this weekend made sense, even if once that might not have been enough. He had returned from international duty in the US on Thursday evening and the following morning he did not make it to training after his son Mateo was born – on 11 September, Catalonia’s diada or national day – so he turned up at El Prat airport on Saturday morning ready to play but having not trained. Just as importantly, this time, being a sub had been agreed, not imposed. “I spoke to Leo before the game,” Luis Enrique explained. “If he had been in perfect condition then of course he would have started but he came from a trip across the ocean, hadn’t trained a single day with us, and it was difficult. We have to protect our players. I thought it was best not to risk it.”

It was still a risk, of course, even if this time Messi sat on the bench and smiled. Real Madrid had just beaten Espanyol 6-0, Cristiano Ronaldo scoring five, and Messi was not even starting? Get it wrong, lose, and Luis Enrique knew what they’d say. But then this time it worked. Messi was introduced after an hour and as he took a step forward, Atlético took a step back. “I don’t know if it is better for us that he starts or that he is a sub,” Atlético defender Juanfran said afterwards. “At least when he starts, you know more or less where he is.”

The ball was put back into play 16 seconds short of the hour, and nine seconds later Messi got it for the first time. Dribbling past his man, he was brought down. That was his first contact with the ball. With his second, third and fourth, he exchanged quick passes. A fifth, sixth and seventh followed quickly. Within four minutes he’d had the ball 15 times and not given it away. A chance was created for Luis Suárez and then for Neymar. And then, Suárez nudged the ball into his path and Messi scored what would prove to be the winner, guiding the ball neatly into the net with the outside of his left foot. He had been on the pitch for 17 minutes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Messi pops up to score. Photograph: Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

He ran to Suárez, finger out, then ran to the camera and put his thumb in his mouth. “Goal from Mateo’s daddy!” shouted the commentator on the radio. “Super Papa,” cheered the headline on the front of Sport, while El Mundo Deportivo called him “Daddy Cool”. “Messi rocks the cradle,” one headline read. “I am your father,” declared Marca, turning to the dark side. When his first son, Thiago, had been born, Messi took five days to score, but then went on to get 40 in his next 26 games; this time he had been quicker. Decisive, too.

“Messi remembered his son, but everyone else remembered Messi’s mum,” ran one cartoon. “Long live the mother that gave birth to him!” That was not surprising: after all, Barcelona had a huge victory, even this early. If Atlético’s win in Sevilla had been a statement, this was a party political broadcast.

Few are saying so publicly, but Barcelona’s players are conscious of having been handed a difficult start to the season; some even greeted the fixtures with a touch of fatalism. But with each win, that eases and now they have won at San Mamés and the Calderón things look and feel a little different. “When you have these types of situations the easiest thing to do is to come up with excuses but I don’t think that would help us,” Javier Mascherano said. When you can turn to Messi it helps, too. Even before he ambled on, the sight of him standing there changed things. It was not just that Atlético’s players seemed to take a step back, you could almost feel their fans doing so too.

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In Marca, Roberto Palomar likened Messi’s performance, and that of Ronaldo at Espanyol, to the scene in Escape to Victory where Michael Caine is going through the tactics with the team. Pelé hops down off the bunk and says: “Coach, give me this.” Taking the chalk, Pelé traces his path across the pitch. “I do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this … goal,” he said. “Easy.” While he was at Valencia, Unai Emery gave a very similar explanation, leaping up to the whiteboard in the team meeting room, with its old sock as an eraser, pen in hand and squiggling a simple one-man line to goal. “If you’re Messi and you can do this, fine,” he insisted. “But we have to seek other routes.”

It is simplistic of course and, although it was 1-1, Barcelona had performed extremely well even without Messi. As Simeone admitted: “Apart from about 10 minutes, they dominated entirely: they dominated time, space, the play.” They had occasionally looked vulnerable at the back but Busquets, Rafinha and Iniesta (almost more Xavi than Iniesta this season) controlled the game and there had been chances: by half-time, Neymar had one blocked, Rakitic had another saved and Suárez hit the bar. All three probably should have been scored; Barcelona could have already killed the game. Equally, it had been Neymar’s brilliant free kick that equalised and Suárez’s touch for Messi’s goal was superb.

Yet Messi’s introduction still changed everything. “He gave the game a different air,” Godín admitted. There was something about the way that he dominated, about the way he played and the way he had walked on to the pitch, about the way that he turned up having travelled halfway across the world, attended the birth of his son, not trained, and still decided a game this big that made that parallel to Pelé’s “easy” fit somehow. In less than half an hour, he had more than 30 touches, provided two unconsummated assists, and scored the winner. “Things are always better when he’s on the pitch,” Neymar said.

Talking points

• Cristiano Ronaldo has scored more league goals for Real Madrid than anyone else, ever. Not some tin-pot club: Real Madrid. So much for the drought. For the first time in six years, he and Messi had both gone two weeks without a goal and, with Gareth Bale stepping into the spotlight, there were questions being raised about Ronaldo. So the next week, the inevitable happened: not only did Messi score, Ronaldo scored a hat-trick. And that was just for starters. He had three inside 20 minutes as Madrid battered Espanyol and five by the final whistle. His seventh season has barely begun and already he has outscored them all: Raúl, Di Stéfano, Puskás, Sánchez, Butragueño, Santillana … everyone: 230 goals in 203 games. Bonkers and brilliant.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates at Espanyol. Photograph: Antonio Villalba/Real Madrid via Getty Images

• “With the feint and the sprint … Joaquín!” Betis’s original cheeky scamp is back 5,837 days later, and how. He provided the assist for Rubén Castro as Betis beat David Moyes’s goalless Real Sociedad. But there was much more to it than that: this was Joaquín at his best, the player it is impossible not to love unless you’re facing him and even then, even with your legs tied in a knot and your head spinning it must still be difficult to suppress a small smile. “We signed him so that he could do what he knows how to do,” Pepe Mel said and what Joaquín knows how to do is drive defenders mad: an out-and-out winger with a great line in assists and an even better line in jokes, he crossed himself three times before the game and crossed the Real Sociedad penalty area more. “Football became emotion at Joaquín’s feet, pure sentiment, pure art”, El Mundo’s Antonio Félix wrote. “Joaquín, the genius, made Betis hearts happy and satisfied retinas that had been beginning for good football.”

• Two-nil down, 3-1 down, one man down, Las Palmas were still not down. The game of the weekend was their 3-3 draw at Celta. And they could have won it too had they not wasted two superb late breakaways as the final minutes turned into one of those games where both teams seem to be playing everyone up front, pretty much no one at the back, with the middle just a place to run through. Fun.

• Aritz Aduriz and Raul García. Together, they’re going to be pretty terrifying and they both scored this weekend as Athletic beat Getafe 3-1. Two of the three were headers – which is no surprise – but better still was the third, scored by Aduriz. If only because he was getting pulled back, tugged and fouled as he ran through the middle, trying to keep up with the move, but rather than fall down, cry a bit and wave an imaginary card in the air like most players would have done, he threw off his man and kept going, dashing into the box where, this time, he did throw himself down – so that he could reach the ball and nudge it in.

Results: Levante 1-1 Sevilla, Espanyol 0-6 Real Madrid, Sporting 0-1 Valencia, Atlético 1-2 Barcelona, Betis 1-0 Real Sociedad, Granada 1-3 Villarreal, Athletic 3-1 Getafe, Celta 3-3 Las Palmas, Málaga 0-0 Eibar. Monday: Rayo-Deportivo.