Foul play Lio!

Written by Panagiotis Petmezas

It is more than ok to lose. That’ s life. Real Madrid was not up for another humiliation in Bernabeu and would do practically anything to win. But Messi’ s behavior towards Cristiano Ronaldo, who played exquisitely and exposes in every given chance Barca’s defense, was completely wrong and presented a bad impression of the Argentinean. Last week, we spoke about Ronaldo’s behavior towards Messi and pointed out how unacceptable and irritating the Portuguese was. What most of the times people remember of football is not only the winner and the loser, because no team can keep on winning forever, but also how “clean” a team has won and how graceful the opponent lost. 

And unfortunately, Messi offered Ronaldo the opportunity to laugh at him, repeating what vice versa had happened last week. Images speak for themselves. The match has ended and Pique salutes Cristiano Ronaldo almost cordially, despite of the fact that he did not even realise how the Portuguese passed him to score Real’s second goal. Players of both teams salute one another and the referee and Messi avoids Ronaldo’s outstretched hand and on the same time lowers his head. Lio leaves the scene and immediately the camera focuses on the Portuguese smiling ironically to the Argentinean’ s direction. 

Apart from all that, it was a deeply human moment with strong feelings from both sides. Messi had to endure much throughout all these years from Ronaldo and fell into the trap, not able to avoid a simple and human mistake. Cristiano, despite his enormous talent and skills, has been strongly and many times bitterly criticised because of his character. But Wednesday night was his night and he deserved to be congratulated by everyone. Lio could have responded to his hand shake and just put an end to the story. But, as the Latins used to say “errare humanum est”, it is only human to make mistakes. And I am definitely sure that Messi regretted within seconds what he did not do, a person who has given so much to all of us for so many years.