a aJagoba Arrasate leapt from his seat shouting and grappling at his suit jacket, pulling at the lapels and pointing insistently at the badge stitched above the heart. An old fashioned, laced-up leather ball, wrapped in a blue and white striped flag and topped with a crown in gold and red. "Hey!" screamed Real Sociedad's coach, hopping up and down, prodding his own chest. "We've got a badge too! We've got a badge! We've got our pride!" The fourth official turned towards him so Arrasate showed the fourth official too, jabbing his finger. "We've got a badge, just like Barça" . A few metres away on the Barcelona bench they were smiling. Some giggled.
They're not laughing now. This time, the view from the Barcelona bench was bleak. If there's a photo that summed up Saturday night's 3-1 defeat at Real Sociedad, it is Xavi Hernández sitting there in his kit and a blue bib, by now aware that he was not going on, unilaterally deciding that his warm-up was over, and staring out across space with his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched, glazed eyes failing to disguise the anger. If looks could kill, there'd be corpses everywhere. On the pitch, Barcelona were collapsing. No resistance, just resignation.
La Real had waited for this moment for a long time. Hang on, no, that's not right: it had only been 10 days (or 17 if you prefer). But la Real had certainly waited for this and so had their fans, noisily packing Anoeta. At times it had felt a bit forced, maybe even a bit false, but la Real had found a new enemy - and defeated them. In the process, they had found a voice too. And a thumping victory over Barcelona; no one has beaten them as emphatically as Real Sociedad did on Saturday night for years.
It all started in the Copa del Rey semi-final on 5 February. In barely a minute, Real Sociedad had gone from a penalty not given, when Javier Mascherano pulled down Carlos Vela, to a goal down. They lost 2-0 at Camp Nou and the sense of injustice grew, which they sought to channel into the second leg. The club filmed a video in which they looked back 26 years to the last, and only, time la Real had won the Copa del Rey. "I hadn't even been born," the striker Antoine Griezmann admits at the start, while the video talks of "pain", "impotence" and "anger" since. The contemporary (double) meaning was not entirely coincidental.
Barcelona controlled the second leg on 12 February, easing into the final with a 1-1 draw. But the tension grew. Sergio Busquets had already exchanged looks, and perhaps words, with Real Sociedad players and some on the touchline. In the final minutes, Cesc Fábregas committed a foul near the touchline and they leapt off the home bench. Arrasate began pointing at the badge; he was annoyed at the referee, although there'd been few questionable decisions this time, but there was something or someone else eating away at him. The smiles on the Barcelona bench, where Busquets was now sitting, made it worse.
Afterwards Arrasate said: "sometimes I get the feeling that they are taking the mickey out of us, that's why I showed them the badge." Asked specifically about Busquets, he avoided specifics but nor did he deny something had happened. "We have our pride and we won't let anyone tread on us." So much for Barcelona's "values" and their "humility", they said; one of the richest clubs in the world, more than a club, and they laugh at us? The talk was of a "lack of respect", of "humiliation".
There was something exaggerated about it, something a little affected, something a little Joe Pesci about the reaction: Funny? Funny how? I'm here to fucking amuse you? It was hard to avoid the conclusion that there must have been something else -- and there were hints, if nothing concrete - and that a few giggles on the bench couldn't have provoked a reaction quite so furious. But there it was. Old affronts returned to the surface, like Barcelona signing Txiki Begiristain and José María Bakero in the summer of 1988. Negotiations had been ongoing in the spring, when Real Sociedad lost the Copa del Rey final – to Barcelona.
Begiristain says that joining Barcelona was easier than joining Real Madrid. Basques and Catalans shared something, after all. And Bakero said that Barcelona were a team that most people liked in San Sebastián. Maybe then. Not now, not any more. This weekend, Real Sociedad were waiting for Barcelona, as the Spanish phrase goes, with the knife between their teeth. "If I acted the way I acted it is because there were things in the cup game that I did not like at all," Arrasate admitted in the pre-match press conference.
"There is a lot of anger in the dressing room and we have to try to take advantage of that," Arrasate had said before the second leg. Ten days later, they did. Alex Song scored an own goal after half an hour. Leo Messi equalised three minutes later but it was a fleeting moment of resistance. At half-time, it was 1-1 and the momentum was with La Real; they'd had seven shots to Barcelona's three. Canal Plus's cameras caught Tata Martino striding into the directors' box, sent off for a confrontation in the tunnel where he had called la Real's assistant manager a "pelotudo", roughly "idiot" in Argentinian Spanish. "You stirred it up in the cup and you're doing it again," he added.
From up there, Martino saw his team capitulate; Griezmann made it 2-1 then David Zurutuza scored a third. There was still half an hour left, but Barcelona did not have a single shot on target in that time. On the second goal, Barcelona were caught out by a huge punt up the field from the goalkeeper Claudio Bravo: Marc Bartra came out of the defence, leaving a huge space for Vela to run into, and then missed the header. On the third goal, a line of six Barcelona defenders stood still as Zurutuza ran 20 yards into the space behind them to score. At the other end, they created nothing. La Real scoring a fourth looked closer than a recovery for the visitors.
The noise built, louder and louder. And when the full time whistle went, Vela's eyes lit up and he blew out his cheeks. Woof! They'd been beaten away for the second time this season, both in the Basque Country. Their run continued: they have not won a league game at Anoeta since 2007. "Four years shaming them," tweeted la Real's striker Diego Ifrán. A few hours earlier, Real Madrid had beaten Elche 3-0 and Martino had said it would be "imprudent" to drop any more points. Barcelona now trail by three. It's not as if Real Sociedad's fans like Madrid much, but they celebrated that too: Barcelona had taken the cup from them, maybe now they might have taken the league off Barcelona.
Martino had lost at Anoeta, just as Tito Vilanova and Pep Guardiola had done. He also admitted that he had made a mistake. But that did not stop them going for him, and worryingly for him the source of many of the stories in this morning's media can be found inside the dressing room. He had not just changed a winning side, removing six of the men who had started against Manchester City, he had changed the style. Xavi had been left out, again. And Fábregas. And Alves. Song had played behind Busquets. If it was supposed to offer protection, it did not: Barcelona's protection comes with the ball. Instead, they were more vulnerable than ever. Barcelona, Santi Giménez wrote in AS, "were like a kitten paralysed in the middle of the motorway, watching the headlights from an articulated lorry get closer."
All this when Barcelona have a week with no game ahead; all this barely a fortnight since Martino said that, with the season entering the decisive months, the rotations would cease. All this at a time when Barcelona's results were slipping, their grip on the top of the table loosening, when they have lost 10 of the last 21 points, drawing 0-0 with Atlético, 1-1 with Levante, and losing 3-2 against Valencia before this weekend. Since the first clásico of the season, the top three would read: Madrid 41, Atlético 33, Barcelona 32.
The reviews came rolling in like for a rubbish film. Something with Jennifer Aniston in. "Ruinous", "disastrous", "a total write-off", "a debacle like the old days," "the year's worst." "You won't win anything like that," ran the headline in Sport.
But amid the analyses of Barcelona, many forgot la Real. This was no one-off: they have lost only once at home all season -- against Atlético Madrid back in September - and this morning they sit a single point behind the final Champions League place. Arrasate judged it perfectly. The speed and directness with which they played totally overran Barcelona, while playing the new signing Sergio Canales as a kind of false No9 worked brilliantly, allowing Vela and Griezmann to sprint in behind. The Frenchman has now scored 15 league goals, only trailing Cristiano Ronaldo and Diego Costa; Vela has 10.
"They showed more intensity than us," Víctor Valdés admitted. "We were the better side," Zurutuza claimed and no one argued. "They created a lot of chances," Gerard Piqué conceded. Afterwards, Arrasate appeared in the press room in his suit, Real Sociedad badge stitched above the heart. "This was the most complete performance of the season," he said proudly.
Talking points
* Belter! Gareth Bale smashed in the second from 30 yards and at over 100kmph, sending the ball crashing in off the crossbar as Real Madrid beat Elche 3-0. They did not actually play that well, and Bale was struggling before the goal, but the victory saw them go out alone at the top for the first time in twenty months. It was a nine-point weekend for them: not only did they win and Barcelona lose, Atlético lost too. "They were the better side," Diego Simeone said of an excellent Osasuna performance. "And when that happens, we congratulate our opponents."
* Real Betis lost 2-0 at home to Athletic Bilbao and their coach Gabi Calderón did his nut after some ropey refereeing did them no favours. "That's enough already," he said. "this league is already unequal in money. It's time they showed us some respect. If we're going to go down to the second division at least let it be down to us." Had the same happened in a Madrid or Barcelona game, we'd be talking about it for weeks, but it didn't so we won't. And, sadly, Calderón can rest assured of one thing: the ref might not have been good but when they go down it'll be nobody's fault but theirs.
* "Is there a referee in the house?" As it turned out there was, too. And so it was that a punter ran the line for Racing Santander.
Results: Valladolid 1 Levante 1, Real Madrid 3 Elche 0, Celta 1 Getafe 1, Real Sociedad 3 Barcelona 1, Almería 0 Málaga 0, Rayo Vallecano 0 Sevilla 1, Real Betis 0 Athletic Bilbao 2, Valencia 2 Granada 1, Osasuna 3 Atlético Madrid 0. Monday: Espanyol-Villarreal.
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